CodeGear Launches Delphi for PHP for RAD Web Development

WebKnowHow
Tuesday, February 20, 2007; 05:46 AM

CodeGear, a leader in developer tools, today announced Delphi® for PHP, a component-based rapid application development (RAD) IDE, and VCL for PHP, an open source visual component library.

Delphi for PHP brings RAD productivity benefits to PHP Web developers that Delphi users have enjoyed for years. PHP is the most prominent dynamic Web language today and one of the top 10 programming languages overall. Delphi for PHP is designed to take PHP development to the next-level by making it faster and easier to develop rich, database-driven Web applications.

“CodeGear developer tools are the finest on the market and Delphi for PHP is no exception,” said Jonathan Benedicto, owner of JomiTech, a developer tools company based in Ontario, Canada.

“As a long-time PHP developer, I quickly adopted Delphi for PHP as my favorite editor. The VCL for PHP offers the familiar Delphi design with tremendous RAD-oriented capabilities. I am now able to simply decouple the GUI from the actual webpage logic code by using the integrated page templating feature. Delphi for PHP truly takes PHP development to the next level,” said Benedicto.

“When it comes to creating dynamic Web applications, PHP developers have had basic source code editing and debugging tools; what's really missing for PHP has been Rapid Development tools and component frameworks that rival modern tools, like Visual Studio® and Delphi and frameworks like ASP.NET and VCL,” said Michael Swindell, CodeGear vice president of products and strategy.

“Delphi for PHP offers all the features and functionality needed to rapidly and visually create powerful PHP applications, new PHP components, and package existing PHP code into reusable visual components. Delphi for PHP does this all with seamless support for MySQL®, InterBase® from CodeGear, and other SQL databases and it does it with an open source VCL for PHP. Microsoft® Windows® RAD developers will now have the familiarity and ease of use that Delphi and C++Builder® have always provided, and can move into PHP development with speed and confidence,” said Swindell.

Important features of Delphi for PHP include:

• RAD environment for PHP
• VCL for PHP – Open source PHP 5 visual component library with more than 50 extendable and reusable components with seamless AJAX integration
• Out-of-the-box database integration with InterBase, MySQL, Oracle®, Microsoft SQL Server, and other popular databases
• Integrated PHP debugger
• Deployment of PHP applications on Windows, Linux, Solaris and other platforms
• Internationalization support for applications
• Drag and drop database application development using the Data Explorer for InterBase and MySQL
• Code editor with Code Insight, Code Explorer, and Code Templates, making it easier and faster to write PHP code

VCL for PHP is based on the most popular open source PHP scripts and libraries, including Qooxdoo, Adodb, DynAPI, Smarty, XAjax and JSCalendar. Inspired by VCL for Delphi, the component architecture is 100 percent written in PHP. Developers can create and integrate components into the IDE and extend the existing components to fit their needs. VCL for PHP is an open source library available on SourceForge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/vcl4php.

Delphi for PHP is part of a family of products from CodeGear that includes Delphi 2007 for Win32, Delphi .NET, C#Builder, C++ Builder and Developer Studio. Developers will be able to hear more about these products, as well as JBuilder® 2007 and InterBase, at the first-ever CodeRage 2007 Virtual Developer Conference - March 12-16. This online developers conference will feature more than 50 technical sessions, covering topics that are all the rage this year. Registration and agenda details will be available at http://conferences.codegear.com/coderage07.

U.S. Pricing and Availability

Delphi for PHP is scheduled to be available in March. The product will be available for an introductory price of $249; special academic pricing will also be available. For more information on system requirements, languages, pricing and availability, visit www.codegear.com/products/delphiforphp.

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