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Delphi was originally envisioned as a next-generation visual development environment for Windows based on Borland's Object Pascal programming language and building upon the success of the popular Turbo Pascal IDE. At the intersection of RAD and client-server development trends, the original Delphi combined a leading-edge visual environment and visual component library (VCL) with superior database access features.

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For the last ten years, Delphi has continued to help developers take advantage of new technologies, from multi-tier Internet computing to Web services and Model-Driven Architecture (MDA), in a consistent visual environment and with the same tradition of superior connectivity as the original Delphi. As underlying platforms evolved, Borland has remained committed to helping developers maintain existing applications while adopting new technologies at their own pace. While Microsoft VisualBasic developers struggled with the complexity of transitioning from the underlying VBRun Win32 framework to the .NET framework, Delphi developers were able to seamlessly move back and forth between VCL and VCL.NET.

This focus on seamless integration of new technologies has applied equally well to new technologies introduced by Borland, as recent versions of Delphi have incorporated more sophisticated enterprise development capabilities, such as model-driven development and application lifecycle management, with the same focus on developer usability and ease of adoption.

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The Delphi roadmap expresses a number of key themes based on consistent customer feedback. In future releases of Delphi, Borland will address customer requirements in the following areas:

Support for the Latest Microsoft Technologies and Platforms, including 64-bit Windows, .NET 2.0, Compact Framework (CF), and Longhorn/Avalon/Indigo

Reduced Migration Risk, with enhancements to technologies such as VCL, ECO (Enterprise Core Objects), and BDP (Borland Data Provider) that shield the end user as much as possible from changing Microsoft technologies and APIs

An Integrated Developer Studio, with consistent support and productivity enhancements across multiple languages (C/C++, C#, Delphi, Delphi.NET) and platforms (Native Windows 32-bit, Native Windows 64-bit, .NET 1.x and 2.0)

Performance Improvements, including startup time, project load time, and deployed application runtime performance, as well as overall IDE responsiveness and stability

Enterprise Development, including enhanced project/build management, requirements management, bug tracking, and version control as well as support for modeling, rapid prototyping, and reverse engineering capabilities

The upcoming release of the Delphi 2006 (previously code named “DeXter”) brings C/C++ language support into the studio and improves productivity through enhancements in Code Insight, Code Completion, Code Templates, and refactoring across all four language personalities. On the Win32 side, significant language and toolchain enhancements have been made to the compiler, including support for operator overloading syntax in Win32 and support for inlining compiler magic functions such as Length(). On the .NET side, Together Modeling has been updated with all of the diagrams, audits and metrics, LiveSource™, and reverse engineering capabilities available in the stand-alone Together Developer product, while ECO III has added property change triggers and new executable state diagram definition and management. Increased performance analysis efforts, including optimized routines from the FastCode project and a new high performance non-blocking multithreaded memory manager, have resulted in drastic improvements in IDE startup times, as well as the runtime performance of deployed Win32 Delphi applications.

DeXter will fully support Win32 C++ programming, alongside Delphi for Win32, Delphi .NET and C#. C++Builder coders will gain access to all the Delphi productivity tools developed since Borland C++Builder6, including recent classics as SyncEdit, History Manager, and Code/Error Insight, as well as new features like Live Code Templates and Smart Block Completion. It also provides RAD VCL (Visual Component Library) application development in C++, using the latest VCL shared with Delphi. DeXter will support development of Win32 VCL applications in Delphi and C++ and .NET 1.x WinForms and VCL.NET applications in Delphi and C#. The command line Delphi compiler will support building apps for .NET Compact Frameworks, though there will be no IDE designer support for CF in this release. In addition, the first phase of Unicode support will appear in DeXter, with Unicode-enabled dbExpress and BDP frameworks available upon release, while drivers will be rolled out over 2006.

NOTE: the following plans for 2006-2007 releases are forward-looking and subject to change

The “Highlander” release will focus on updating the entire Delphi toolset to support .NET 2.0. There will be ongoing work for Win32 Delphi and Win32 C++ (such as unit testing and additional refactorings) but the most of the new work in Highlander will be focused on .NET 2.0. Highlander will add Delphi.NET support for generic types, partial classes, and nullable types, and all WinForms, Web Services, and ADO.NET support will be converted to support .NET 2.0. VCL, BDP, and ECO will all support .NET 2.0 as transparently as possible to minimize migration issues for customers. Delphi Highlander will fully support existing Delphi projects, including existing ASP.NET projects, and will provide seamless project conversion to .NET 2.0.

Highlander will include IDE design surfaces for .NET Compact Frameworks (using VCL.NET on CF), as well as support for transparently developing and debugging 64 bit .NET apps written using WinForms and VCL.NET. In addition, 64 bit code generation will be added to the Delphi native code compliers to support native 64 bit development and debugging. The phased approach to Unicode will continue in Highlander and through the subsequent Longhorn release, with enhancements to both the IDE and VCL runtimes to support Unicode.

The current plan is to release Highlander in calendar year 2006, with tech preview builds available for download by registered Delphi customers shortly after .NET 2.0 is released.

While the transition from .NET 1.x to .NET 2.0 is non-trivial, the next-generation presentation and communication technologies (“Avalon” and “Indigo” respectively) that Microsoft plans for their Longhorn release constitute far more drastic changes for Windows developers, who may face challenges reminiscent of the VB to VB.NET transition. The Delphi release that follows Highlander will help reduce migration issues by providing a VCL for Avalon and by integrating Indigo into Delphi’s cross-tier communications framework (e.g. ECO, BDP, DataHub and DataSync). In particular, support for reverse-engineering of existing applications with Together and deployment of executable models with ECO for Indigo will significantly reduce the complexity of porting existing applications. In addition to supporting Longhorn, Avalon, Indigo, and the WinFX APIs from Microsoft, this release will introduce managed C++ support as well as ECO support for C++, and will continue to add and enhance productivity features applicable across all language personalities and platforms in the studio.