CodeGear offers drag-and-drop web development
CodeGear has launched the Delphi for PHP 2.0 integrated development environment to improve its developer tools suite for building interactive web applications.
Formed as an independent brand from the developer tools division of Borland, CodeGear said that Delphi for PHP 2.0 features visual drag-and-drop design capabilities for rapid development. It also has a PHP component framework for the foundation-level building blocks and design structure.
According to CodeGear, the new product's PHP debugging options sit alongside error insight and source-code formatting features to reduce the potential for bug creation in web development. The company says that built-in HTML templates will help PHP developers to work visually with their Web 2.0 development and collaborate with other HTML designers.
"With the initial introduction of Delphi for PHP, we brought together PHP and rapid application development for the first time," said Michael Swindell, vice president of products at CodeGear. "With version 2.0, we are raising the bar with a wide array of new productivity, debugging and performance-tuning features and much broader 'out-of-the-box' support for databases and popular PHP packages and libraries."
CodeGear said its product is targeted at developers in a wide variety of roles who want to bring a web component into their applications. The latest offering could, for example, be used by a database developer who wants to create intranet and internet gateways to natively connect them to their database.
Delphi for PHP 2.0 employs a visual and component-based approach to Web 2.0 PHP development similar to that used by Microsoft Visual Studio ASP.Net and C++Builder developers. The chief marketing officer for Zend Technologies, Mark de Visser, has confirmed that CodeGear has also added support for the Zend Framework to increase the options for development between both the PHP and Zend communities.
Delphi for PHP 2.0 is available for an introductory price of £131 until the end of June 2008. Upgrades from Delphi for PHP 1.0 currently cost £99.