Delphi History With More Than

Delphi History

With more than 1.7 million developers, Delphi is a widely used Rapid Application Development (RAD) environment. Delphi offers developers a variety of benefits. Applications built with Delphi are compact, fast, provide rich Uis, and can connect with most available databases or data sources ("Delphi"). This paper explores the history of Delphi from Pascal to Borland Developer Studio 2006.

From Pascal to Borland Developer Studio 2006:

Delphi language is based on Object Pascal. Pascal was published by Professor Niklaus Wirth, in 1971, as a successor to Algol -- the first high-level language that featured a structured, readable, and systematically defined syntax. Implemented, with a few modifications, in 1973, Pascal had many features derived from earlier languages. Algol was the source of the case statement and value-result parameter passing. The records structures of Pascal had a lot in common with Cobol and PL 1. Pascal added the ability to take simpler existing data types and define new ones. The dynamic data structures of Pascal also lets it grow and shrink while a program is running ("A Brief History"). Delphi uses this language due to its consistent programming style and the reliability of applications written with it.

ISO Pascal appeared in 1982. Compas Pascal appeared at approximately the same time, created by Anders Heilsberg. Compas Pascal was very similar to the later Turbo Pascal, which was later remade and renamed PolyPascal, by the company Polay Data A/S, which was eventually sold to Borland. Borland would produce it as Turbo Pascal, releasing it in 1983. The competition simply couldn't compete with Turbo Pascal's speed of compilation or execution ("A Brief History"). Heilsberg joined Borland as a chief architect.

Heilsberg was the architect for all versions of Turbo pascal, as well as the first three versions of Delphi. As chief architect, it was Heilsberg that converted Turbo Pascal into an object-oriented application development language. The language had evolved to include "a truly visual environment and superb database-access features" ("Delphi History").

Thorpe notes that 'Delphi' began as a beta codename for a skunkworks project at Borland that involved a next-generation visual development environment for Windows. In mid-1993, after 6 months of intense research, market analysis, and proof-of-concept exercises, the Pascal development team were brainstorming codenames in the R&D manager, Gary Whizin's office. While Whizin kept suggesting the codename 'Oracle', because of the programs SQL connectivity to Oracle servers, that codename didn't sit well with the rest of the group, because of the confusion with the same-name company and server product. They wanted a name that reflected the fact that their product was a client building tool, not 'server stuff'. It was a way to talk to Oracle and other servers.

The question came up, according to Thorpe, "How do you talk to an oracle?" The word association Thorpe came up with was -- the Oracle at Delphi. He states that he offered, "Delphi: If you want to the Oracle, go to Delphi." Although not an immediate hit with the group, and the 1.0 product went through several other codenames to help keep secrecy and discover where leaks were coming from. However, it was finally accepted and would become the name with which the end product finally went to market.

Delphi 1 was first released in 1995. The product extended Borland's Pascal language, with its object-oriented and form-based approach. It was an extremely fast native code compiler, with visual two-way tools and database support. Delphi had close integration with Windows and component technology. The next year, Delphi 2 was released as the world's fastest optimizing 32-bit native-code compiler. It was described as having "the ease of VB, with the power of C++" ("Delphi History"). Development on Delphi continued at a breakneck speed.

Delphi 3 was introduced in 1997, with a variety of new features and enhancements. Code insight technology, component templates, DLL debuggiing, the WebBroker technology, the DecisionCube and TeeChart components, ActiveForms, and integration with COM via interfaces were all new improvements. Delphi 4 was released the next year and included anchoring, docking, and constraining components. New features for Delphi 4 included: dynamic arrays, AppBrowser, Windows 98 support, method overloading, improved COM and OLE support, and extended database support. In 1999, Delphi 5 was released with new features and enhancements. From desktop layouts, parallel development, new Internet capabilities with XML, and more database power, Delphi 5 offered the tool for high productivity development for the increasingly popular Internet ("Delphi History").

Delphi 6 was introduced in 2000, with additional support for cross-platform development. Now the same code could be compiled with Delphi, via Windows, or Kylix, via Linux. Enhancements included support for Web Services, DBExpress, as well as a variety of new components and classes. In 2001, Delphi 7 provided the migration path to Microsoft .NET, with the ability for developers to take their solutions cross-platform to Linux (Doyle). Delphi 8, in 2002, continued improvements and enhancements of the product, by providing Visual Component Library and Component Library for Cross-platform development for both Win32 and Linux, and other new features ("Delphi History"; Taft).