Development

Embarcadero Releases CodeGear RAD Studio 2009

Rapid application development tool targets Windows, .NET and Web

• By John K. Waters
• 01/07/09

Embarcadero Technologies' acquisition of CodeGear from Borland Software Corp. last year has borne fruit in the form of a newly released rapid application development (RAD) tool.

The new tool underscores the company's new focus on developers. Since acquiring the CodeGear tools group in May of last year, San Francisco-based Embarcadero has gathered its product offerings under two headings: DatabaseGear, for its existing line of database tools, and CodeGear, for its new developer tools.

Integrated Toolset
The RAD Studio 2009 toolset combines the capabilities of the Delphi 2009 IDE for Windows and C++Builder 2009-both CodeGear-developed tools-with new .NET development capabilities in Delphi Prism. Unveiled in October at Microsoft's annual Professional Developers Conference 2008, Delphi Prism is a .NET-based managed-code solution aimed at Windows, Mac and Linux. The Prism development environment uses the RemObjects Oxygene compiler.

The result of this combination, the company reported, is a pairing that supports both low-level native Windows development and higher-level managed .NET code. CodeGear RAD Studio 2009 also comes with the Mono platform for deployment on Mac OS X and Linux.

Delphi Revival
Embarcadero has revived Delphi by aiming its core version of the product, Delphi 2009, at Win32 environments. The new RAD tools leverage beloved Delphi features like generics and anonymous methods. They also provide early support for C++0x standards in C++Builder.

Embarcadero's new RAD tool also supports DataSnap, the COM-based software for RAD creation of multi-tier database applications for Win32. The DataSnap components allow developers to create Data Broker/Client apps with TCP/IP, DCOM, HTTP and SOAP transport protocols.

Embarcadero is offering its new RAD Studio tools suite in Professional, Enterprise and Architect Editions. Pricing for the Professional Edition starts at $1,399. The Architect Edition includes Embarcadero's ER/Studio Developer Edition for RAD with database modeling and design capabilities.