Inprise/Borland announces Delphi 5

Inprise Corporation on Monday announced Borland Delphi 5, the next version of its Object Pascal-based Rapid Application Development (RAD) package for Windows 9x and NT. Delphi 5 is designed to help easily extend Windows application development to the Internet, with support for browser clients, Web servers, middleware, and back-end databases. The target: Microsoft's Visual Studio, which offers a suite of applications--Visual Basic, Visual C++, and Visual InterDev key among them--that target Web development.

"Visual Studio really demands that you use different tools to fix the problems of Internet development. With Delphi, you use one skill set to tackle the problems. You really have one tool that solves all of the top problems when doing Internet development," says Ben Riga, group product manager for Borland tools. "Visual Studio is a hodge-podge of different technologies, with each solving a bit of a problem."

Inprise is planning to ship Delphi 5 next month in three editions: Delphi 5 Standard ($100), Delphi 5 Professional ($800), and Delphi 5 Enterprise ($2500)