Borland has taken the wraps off its new Web forms expert, IntraBuilder. Susan Amos from our sister publication, Software Futures takes an early peek at the tool.
Continuing its campaign to be seen as the Internet tools company, Borland from Scotts Valley, California plans to take the developer community by storm with its new Web tool IntraBuilder. Dubbed Visual Basic for the Web, It is set to hit the market this fall, ahead of the competition, attempting to trample under foot offerings from the likes of Powersoft and Microsoft. Borland is cashing in on the current vogue for Intranet projects, hence the name that leaves you in no doubt as to what the tool does – IntraBuilder. The software is designed as a natural progression for those of you who are used to developing applications for Paradox or Microsoft Access databases, or are familiar with Delphi, Borland’s graphical client/server development tool. In fact it shares some of the same technology as Delphi, for example in the area of middleware, with the Borland Database Engine to link out to data sources. Borland is boasting that power users can also roll their sleeves up and get clicking, but our first impression is that it is more like a programmer’s tool. Bundled with the production version of IntraBuilder this fall will be around twenty get-you-started sample apps, such as an employee phone list and a guest book. But before you get too excited, we need to be clear about how far up the food chain this tool will take you. Applications will be more than the browse-only mode of the dead Web. Users will be able to update entries. IntraBuilder will send an error message back if two users try to update the same data. But hold on to your horses. It’s not going to start replacing data-heavy mission-critical systems, because it’s talking HTML. With HTML, each time a value changes on a screen, the whole screen has to be refreshed, which would stress out someone doing intensive data entry.
So IntraBuilder will hover around the useful-to-important information retrieval area of application development. It exploits the current backlash against Windows, and the accompanying rise of the browser. Because staff can use browsers to get at the information, this centralizes maintenance and distribution of the app. Some local processing can be done on the client with JavaScript, say validation of the input to a field. We spoke to an early fan of IntraBuilder, London-based systems integrator Hoskyns, part of the European computer services group Cap Gemini Sogeti. Hoskyns is trying out a pre-release version of IntraBuilder. Richard Goldklang, principal consultant in the technical consulting group, picks out what’s good about the tool and how it differs from Delphi. Hoskyns has 500 consultants out and about at customer sites. Keeping track of who’s at what site is no mean feat. The company is building a location manager, an online register that consultants will be able to sign into each day from a browser at the customer site. The new IntraBuilder application is a thin client version of the company’s current Delphi app. With the existing app, consultants have to ring in to their secretaries and get them to update their location. This is because the Delphi app does not support Web browsers and remote updates. The Delphi application is fine between our two London offices, where the wide area network (WAN) is two megabits but we have slower links to offices in the rest of the country, 64 kilobit leased lines. We could rewrite the Delphi application, but then you’d have to worry about protocols and distribution of executables. IntraBuilder solves the distribution problem. Other internal information that could be published in this way includes Hoskyns’ monthly forecasts of what work will be achieved by which teams, timesheets and expenses. The tool’s strength lies in its point-and-click forms, coupled with its access to just about any data source. Forms can be easily created with Delphi and Visual Basic, but they’re not browser-enabled. HTML writers like Frontpage write HTML and draw screens up, but are not database-enabled, he says. IntraBuilder connects directly to Oracle, Sybase, Informix and DB/2 databases, and to other data sources via ODBC. So will IntraBuilder be obsoleted when Borland’s much-talked about Java development tool Latte comes out early next year, we wondered? The answer is, apparently, no. IntraBuilder will not stray out of its patch as the tool that’s so light you can eat it between meals. Latte produces Java code. The nearest to Java that IntraBuilder gets could be a stock control applet written in Java or ActiveX that’s been embedded into an IntraBuilder application. And Delphi will keep on developing client/server apps, as long as it stays in the Borland stable, that is. The rumor mill currently has Netscape eyeing up the technology with its wallet open. Borland had better enjoy its technology lead while it las ts, the rest of the pack are close behind. It looks like IntraBuilder will soon be joined by a whole slew of pretenders. Watch out for Microsoft’s Internet Studio, entering beta test this fall and slated for December release, and Powersoft’s NetImpa ct Studio, due into beta in the fourth quarter of this year.
Raring to go? Why not download a beta release of IntraBuilder from the Borland Web site at: http://netserv.borland.com/intrabuilder. Happy clicking!