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THE FUTURE TODAY
with Embarcadero® RAD Studio 2010
by Mike Rozlog
I
t’s finally here! I can finally talk about the new RAD Studio product. As the Product Manager for RAD Studio, Delphi, C++Builder and a couple of others, I know it is always hard during the last couple of months before you ship the new product—or it should be. As many people who rely on tools to help get their jobs done, as a developer you understand the excitement of introducing new features or functionality or distinctive productivity items that will help make you and your company more successful. Think of what it is like for the Product Manager to see the awesome new features come together and know that a lot of individual developers, small ISVs, enterprises, and new start-ups are going to get a leg up on the solutions they are creating with your products. RAD Studio is really three major parts: the Delphi 2010, C++Builder 2010, and Delphi Prism products. Each of these products brings a different language to the Windows platform, but they all have the same common thread: the ability to rapidly build great Windows applications. This includes the entire Windows stable of OSs including the older Windows 2000, the continuing support for XP and Vista, and early support for Windows 7. There are areas that are common between Delphi and C++Builder, and they usually focus on usability and speed. When thinking of 2010, the new usability feature that I believe will get a lot of attention is IDE Insight. This feature allows developers to hit a keystroke and a dialog will appear. They can then start typing in the feature or function in the IDE they are looking for and a most-likely list is displayed. Once the item is displayed and selected, the user can then execute the command and the IDE will either go to the location or do the command. There are two great things about this one feature. The first is that it will help people be more productive by allowing them to find things faster, while at the same time help teach the developers the shortcuts inside the IDE. The second is that it is a learning feature that allows developers to add new features to the IDE and the IDE Insight will learn about those new features and add them to the list. Another common area is speed, and over the past few years we have witnessed Delphi and C++Builder getting faster, with the optimizations over the last couple of
releases being in the neighborhood of 5x faster. This speed / optimization continues in 2010, with the edition of background compiling for both products. This will allow long-running compiles to be executed in the background while the developer can continue working; this will be noticed by all developers. The VCL is also a common item between the two environments and it has been the lifeblood of the product helping developers build great user frontends for the Windows platform. Over the years, the VCL has been updated like it was in the 2009 release, where all types of things were added as we implemented Unicode—things like the Ribbon Controls that allow developers to build Microsoft Office look & feel applications without the constraints of .NET and the Microsoft Office libraries. In 2010, a major feature that has been added to the VCL is Gesturing / Touch support. This is a fundamental change to the VCL, not a bolt-on addition. This is an interface into the heart of the VCL that allows for full gesturing with either a mouse or a touch screen. The Gesturing engine is available in all supported Windows versions: 2000, XP,Vista, and Windows 7. As an example of how integrated the new feature is, you can take the original Fishfacts demo application that shipped with Delphi 1.0 and recompile it in 2010 and it will be totally gesture/touch enabled with no coding changes. The VCL understands around 30+ common gestures and the interface allows for unlimited creation of custom gestures. RAD Studio has always been known for its ability to support database connectivity and with 2010, this is no exception. Of course we have updated support for the latest from the commercial database vendors, but the real news is around Firebird support. Yes, that is right; we now have support in RAD Studio for the open source Firebird database. The integration supports both 1.5 and 2.1.x of the database and works just like all the other databases supported inside the RAD Studio products.
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When you start to break down the specialized features, I always like to focus on the ones that I think will help the masses. With the Delphi 2010 release, that feature is definitely the DataSnap functionality. In 2009, DataSnap was completely rewritten to remove the dependency of COM/DCOM and it introduced one of the fastest ways to build a multi-tier application. In 2010, we’ve added the ability to host the server inside the IIS; we added support for HTTP/HTTPS accessibility and tunneling, and many others. The one feature that I’m most excited about is the implementation of REST access for the server. This means that DataSnap servers can now participate in any open architecture. It can consume RESTful calls and it can expose its own services as RESTful, which again will allow developers to expose new functionality to any architecture from TCP/IP,Web Services, Cloud, and JEE. In the C++ world, we added the new Class Browser. This allows for developers to quickly ascertain the structure of the C++ and be able to manipulate it very fast. This has been one of the most requested features for C++Builder and the great part is that our implementation has spawned more ideas around how to expose even more information in the future. So, that leads us to Delphi Prism, our complete solution for .NET. Delphi Prism isn’t standing still either, it is always staying current with the latest from Microsoft’s .NET platform and since the product is built on the Visual Studio Shell (VSS) it means our customers are always current. In the latest release, the Prism environment has added Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) that takes Object Oriented Programming to the next level. This means that Delphi Prism now has features that Microsoft doesn’t, and it makes programming in .NET with Prism even faster than before. There are so many other features that I could write about, but I only have limited space. It is always exciting to talk about new products; it is also exciting to think about
what is coming in the future. The great news is that Embarcadero is investing in RAD Studio because they believe, as I do, that Delphi, C++Builder, and Prism products offer a great value to developers and are putting key investments into place to take the products even further in the future. Also offering great value to developers is All-Access which allows all of Embarcadero’s products to be accessible to the developer. This means if I’m writing some code and I have to connect to an unknown database, I can start up ER/Studio and create a quick reverse-engineered ER-Diagram of that database and understand it, or if I need to write better SQL, I can kickoff Rapid SQL and se the SQL IDE to build it. All of the products are available to the developer when they need them. One of the great features of All-Access is that it supports what we call IONs or “Instant On” capability. This allows the individual products to be loaded into a stand-alone instant virtual machine for the particular product, so in the above example in generating an E/R diagram, it would not cause the developer to muddy up their environment (registry, HD space, etc) with an install; it would be loaded in the instant virtual machine, run and then shut down. The only thing would be the local file store for the E/R diagram created. This is very cool technology and there are many more All-Access features worthy of a write-up. So don’t forget that the new 2010 is out there! It has a lot of great features that can help you take your Windows development to the next level. Whether you are focused on native applications or exposing and using the .NET platform, Embarcadero has you covered. Plus, if you need more than one product like RAD Studio, don’t forget to check out the All-Access product to give you, the developer, all the tools you need—at your fingertips.
Embarcadero News & Events: http://www.embarcadero.com/news/events.php
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mike Rozlog is the Sr. Director of Delphi Solutions for Embarcadero Technologies. In this role, he is focused on ensuring the family of Delphi developer products being created by Embarcadero meets the expectations of developers around the world. Much of his time is dedicated to discussing and explaining the technical and business aspects of Embarcadero’s products and services to analysts and other audiences worldwide. Mike was formerly with CodeGear, a developer tools group that was acquired by Embarcadero in 2008. Previously, he spent more than eight years working for Borland in a number of positions, including a primary role as Chief Technical Architect. A reputed author, Mike has been published numerous times. His latest collaboration is Mastering JBuilder from John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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