Borland Releases Kylix 2

Tal Cohen writes "Borland Kylix 2 is now available. Most new features are geared at Enterprise-level developers; the Open edition is still available for free download. The CLX (cross-platform component library) is covered under both GNU and Borland's license." The new features list is interesting - a fair number of buzzwords, but it also looks like they are supporting a lot of the new stuff. The white papers have some interesting topics - including gcc vs. Kylix.

Comments

Re:e-buzz word whip lash...

[borgboy]

Yep. Lots of people are using this. Lots. DataSnap is the new term for what Borland previously branded as their MIDAS technology, but due to trademark collisions, yada yada...

DataSnap is based around a couple of classes:
1. a TClientDataset class, which is responsible for representing an in-memory dataset which can be persisted as XML and has the capability to record offline dataset changes and post them back to the data persistence layer when necessary.
2. a TDatasetProvider, which links a TClientDataset to a persistence layer, such as a RBMS such as Oracle, MySQL, Interbase, DB2, or even (gasp) MSSQL. There is also an TXMLTransformProvider that can act as a 2 way mapping layer from a dataset to an XML document.
3. A TCustomRemoteServer descendant which supplies the remoting capability - placing the TClientDataSet and the TDataSetProvider on separate machines. These components can provide connections via HTTP, vanilla sockets, CORBA, etc. There are also load balancing helpers to distribute the load.

And then there are the Web Services. Yep. That works too. It's SOAP, plain and simple.

We've got a DataSnap app deployed today, handling payroll data for ~1400 retail outlets. Heck, the TClientDataset class itself is worth the investment, even if you never build a n-tier system with it.