Strings can be concatenated by using the '+' operator, rather than using functions. For dedicated string types Delphi handles memory management without programmer intervention. Since Borland Developer Studio 2. Delphi includes an integrated IDE. The Delphi products all ship with a Visual Component Library (VCL), including most of its source code. Third- party components (sometimes with full source code) and tools to enhance the IDE or for other Delphi related development tasks are available, some free of charge. The IDE includes a GUI for localization and translation of created programs that may be deployed to a translator; there are also third- party tools with more features for this purpose.
The VCL framework maintains a high level of source compatibility between versions, which simplifies updating existing source code to a newer Delphi version. Third- party libraries may need updates from the vendor but, if source code is supplied, recompilation with the newer version may be sufficient. The VCL was an early adopter of dependency injection or inversion of control; it uses a- . With class helpers new functionality can be introduced to core RTL and VCL classes without changing the original source code of the RTL or VCL.
The compiler is optimizing and single pass. It can optionally compile to a single executable which does not require DLLs. Delphi can also generate standard DLLs, Active. X DLLs, COM automation servers and Windows services.
The Delphi IDEs since Delphi 2. UML models from the source code or to modify the source through changes made in the model. Delphi has large communities on Usenet and the web. When Delphi was owned by Codegear, many of its employees actively participated. Backward compatibility. Incompatibility necessarily arises as new functionality is added, e. Firemonkey of platforms other than Windows.
Limitations. For example, the design of the standard class libraries (VCL/RTL) had become somewhat dated and restrictive; Embarcadero released in 2. Delphi XE2 a new compiler and cross- platform VCL replacement called Fire. Monkey, based on Direct.
D and Open. GL, which runs on other platforms in addition to Windows, supporting their features, but is not fully backwards- compatible with VCL applications. Fire. Monkey applications do however allow easy sharing of non visual code units with VCL applications, enabling a lot of code to be ported easily between the platforms. Some releases of Delphi have been reported to be unstable.
Delphi XE7, in particular, was often reported to be slow and subject to severe memory leaks. Code examples. Borland developer Danny Thorpe suggested the Delphi codename in reference to the Oracle at Delphi. One of the design goals of the product was to provide database connectivity to programmers as a key feature and a popular database package at the time was Oracle database; hence, . However, the Borland marketing leadership preferred a functional product name over an iconic name and made preparations to release the product under the name .
After much debate and many market research surveys, the Delphi codename became the Delphi product name. He was persuaded to move to Microsoft in 1. On February 8, 2. Borland announced that it was looking for a buyer for its IDE and database line of products, including Delphi, to concentrate on its ALM line.
On November 1. 4, 2. Borland transferred the development tools group to an independent subsidiary company named Code. Gear, instead of selling it. Borland subsequently sold Code.
Gear to Embarcadero Technologies in 2. Embarcadero retained the Code.
Gear division created by Borland to identify its tool and database offerings, but identified its own database tools under the Database. Gear name. In 2. 01. Embarcadero was purchased by Idera, but the Embarcadero mark was retained for the developer tools division. Versions. Delphi evolved from Borland's . Early Turbo Pascal (for MS- DOS) was written in a dialect of the Pascal programming language; in later versions support for objects was added, and it was named Object Pascal. Delphi has always used Object Pascal, which continued to be developed, as its underlying object- oriented language.
Borland Delphi 2. Delphi 1 was bundled with it for creation of 1. Windows 3. 1 applications.
New Quickreport components replacing Borland Report. Smith. Borland Delphi 3.
IDE came with a completely overhauled editor and became dockable. VCL added support for Action. Lists anchors and constraints. Additional improvements were method overloading, dynamic arrays, Windows 9.