There are those times when a data module needs to be shared to accomplish reasonable data access in the Delphi component architecture.
To accomplish such a feat create a new package. Save the package to the desired location then add a data module to the package.
Click on the “Contains” folder and force the “add new” option to appear. Traverse to the “Other” option until the “New Items” dialog appears then click on the “Data Module” icon. This will place a new data module object in the package.
Save the data module to a desired name then return to the Project Manager and left click on the “.bpl” then traverse the dialog and click on the “Install” option. This will install the package for subsequent use.
Notice absence of the register procedure and the standard creation on the component palate. This constitutes the package a special (nontraditional) bpl.
I recommend using a instantiation procedure to instantiate the object and a free object procedure to free resources consumed by the object when its usage in complete.
Mr. Arch Brooks, Software Engineer, Brooks Computing Systems authored this article.