Gear up and switch on your Turbo

NOTE: this article is a translation of my article in the recent Borland Germany newsletter published at Die neuen Turbos – Ein Anwenderbericht.

During the last weeks and months, we thought about the old Borland times. Back then the names like Turbo Pascal and Turbo C++ got us excited, made us dream. Back in the eighties and nineties, the Turbo product line was one of the most successful developer tools product line available on the market. Later we had Borland Delphi and Borland C++Builder, which where quiet successful too.

Today we have a totally new IDE, which was developed under the codename Galileo. And about three years ago four languages where merged into this one IDE: Delphi, Delphi.NET, C++ and C#. Yet, many developers just need one of those languages to work with, they don't want an IDE with four languages...

Well rejoice, the Turbo family is coming home
Very soon the Developer Tools Group (DTG), currently part of the Borland Corporation, will bring eight new products on the market: Turbo Delphi, Turbo Delphi for .NET, Turbo C++, and Turbo C#. Each of those products will be available as freely available Explorer edition and as well priced Professional edition.

The "small" Turbo, the Explorer editions
All four Explorer editions will come bundled with the Borland Interbase 7.5.1 database server for development. They will contain all components needed for database development, something not seen in a long time in the lower end versions of the Borland developer IDEs. That is definitely a step in a promising future for all.

Each explorer Edition will come with over 200 defined drag- and drop components ready for use right out of the box. The VCL components will include the most recent additions like the TTrayIcon, TFlowPanel, and TGridPanel components.

It may come as a surprise to you, but you will get UML support with the explorer editions for your Delphi, Delphi.NET, and C# projects. You will not be able to design stand-alone UML projects, but you will have them for your language specific projects. The UML support is two-way, you can code and import that into your UML project and you can design UML and export that to your code, just as you do in the big BDS suites.

However, the .NET editions (Delphi for .NET and C#) have another surprise ready for you: ECO support. One of the most exciting features of the recent BDS versions will be available for free, however only XML persistence is supported, just as in the BDS 2006 professional editions. Please remember, since ECO is a .NET feature, this will not be available for Turbo Delphi (for Win32) and Turbo C++. The .NET editions also come bundled with the NUnit testing framework.

But let's not stop exploring the Explorer editions just now. There is another goodie never seen in free editions before: you get the full VCL and RTL source code. This is one of the key features of Delphi since version 1, you are always able to look up what is going on on the inside of your apps. This time however for free!

The Professional Turbo editions
Basically, one could say, the Turbo Professional editions match the Borland Developer Studio 2006 Professional edition, however, they just come in one personality (language) flavour and do not have all four. This allows you to get the full Professional power for your language you like.

Besides all that you get in the Explorer editions, you get third party tools (where applicable) like RAVE Reports, IntraWeb, and the Indy component suite with your Professional version.

Further only with the Professional editions you will get the power to install any third party libraries right into Delphi to expand your components tool palette and add other features to your IDE. This will open a whole new world to you as you can install things like JCL, JVCL, madExcept, etc. into your IDE.

Getting your Turbo installed
Depending on the Turbo product you chose, you will have to install some prerequisites, such as the MS .NET Framework, MS SDK, XML DOM 4.0. The installer will take care of those things for you.

Next you install your Turbo just as any other application. The Explorer edition and the Professional edition come on the same medium, and the serial number and authorization key will be selecting whether you have an Explorer or a Professional edition installed. In order to use all features you will have to register your copy, otherwise some features may be disabled.

NOTE: Please refer to original article (link at the top) for a simple feature matrix.

Last, but not least
Watch out at turboexplorer.com for further announcement and downloads.

Screen Shots
Some screen shots can be found at Borland Infocenter Germany (direct link)

Have fun using your new Turbo :)