Embarcadero Technologies has retooled Delphi Prism for Visual Studio 2010’s new architecture, opening up the IDE to Delphi developers.
Delphi Prism 2011, set for release on May 15, includes a rapid application development tool and a new edition of the Delphi Prism language. The tool plugs into Visual Studio’s interface and fully supports .NET Framework 4.0.
Delphi, a software development environment first released by Borland in 1995, is a dialect of the Object Pascal programming language.
The integration goes as deep as Visual Studio’s structures and solution steps, said Mike Rozlog, senior director of Delphi solutions at Embarcadero Technologies. Other new features include code obfuscation, parallel extensions and the ability to convert C# code into the Prism language.
Embarcadero leveraged the Visual Studio 2010 shell to offer better usability, from code readability to code editing, according to the company. It also promises cleaner connectivity to InterBase and Blackfish SQL databases, as well as the ability to create DataSnap clients in .NET that connect to Delphi DataSnap servers for multi-tier applications.
The Prism language was updated with additional constructs to support .NET 4.0’s features, Rozlog said. There is also more interoperability between Prism and Delphi, he added. “We want it to be as close as possible so that developers who go from Delphi to Prism feel right at home.”
Silverlight 4, which is a subset of the .NET Framework, will be supported in a future release of Delphi Prism.
Delphi Prism also works with Visual Studio 2008 and MonoDevelop. Developers can use Mono, an implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure specification, to build Cocoa-based UIs for applications targeting Apple hardware.
