This first sneak preview showcases the integrated development environment (IDE) enhancements in RAD Studio 2010, some of the more than 120 that improve developer experience and productivity.

New features include:

• IDE Insight – a timesaving tool to easily find files, components, features and settings using simple keystrokes and search terms
• Code Formatter – to implement consistent coding styles with minimal effort
• Class Explorer – for a configurable hierarchical view of class libraries throughout a project and enabling fast navigation to declarations and implementations and now available for C++Builder
• Data Visualizers – that make debugging easier by displaying visual representations of data in definable forms
• Debugger Thread Control – to freeze, thaw and isolate individual threads within applications during debugging to track down problems faster

Coming August 11, 2009, Building Touch and Gesture Enabled Apps Preview

Fast path to 2010

Buy Delphi 2009, C++Builder 2009 or RAD Studio 2009 plus Maintenance and you’ll automatically get version 2010 when it is available.  Plus, if you buy now you’ll get another tool free!

The following is an article posted on ZDNet UK.

It’s not just Microsoft Office making waves with a 2010 release product push just now you know? Database tools player Embarcadero is currently showcasing ‘sneaky peaks’ of its RAD Studio 2010 IDE enhancements, which it hopes will up the ante in developer productivity.  Actually they are calling them sneak peaks – but sneaky peaks is so much better, so let’s stick with it.

I confess to not having commented on Embarcadero for some time now, so news of IDE enhancements is solid enough for a mention or two. Rather than list product names, the augmentations centre around features such as timesaving file search functions, consistent code formatting tools and new data visualisers to make debugging easier by displaying visual representations of data in definable forms.

There’s also a class explorer which claims to provide a configurable hierarchical view of class libraries throughout a project – and a debugger thread control tool to isolate individual threads within applications during debugging to track down problems faster.

Having followed companies like Embarcadero and perhaps Sybase too for some time now, I think they both play in a relatively special place in terms of being database tool vendors as well as pure play database vendors. I suppose it’s a logical progression if you consider the history of databases over the last 25 years or so. These are databases – all grown up – if you like.

I guess my blog headline could have almost been: “When is a database not a database? When it’s a database with an extended set of development tools, tabular management technologies and debugging add ons – oh and also some extensions for robustness and security of the data itself is going to need to be synchronised with various mobile devices back to the corporate data centre.”

But that would just have been silly – so I didn’t do that.

The corporate blurb – and jolly fine stuff it is too – tells us that, “Throughout August, Embarcadero will be showcasing sneak previews to show what’s in store for RAD Studio 2010 with its new 2010 versions of Delphi, C++Builder and Delphi Prism.”

Posted by Adrian Bridgwater

http://bit.ly/DmH63

Embarcadero Demonstrates Its Continued R&D Investment and Innovation in the RAD IDE Business

SAN FRANCISCO—(BUSINESS WIRE)–Embarcadero Technologies, a provider of database tools and developer software, today announced the first of three Embarcadero^®RAD Studio 2010 sneak previews. The first sneak preview showcases the integrated development environment (IDE) enhancements in the new release, some of the more than 120 that improve developer experience and productivity. New features include:

• IDE Insight – a timesaving tool to easily find files, components, features and settings using simple keystrokes and search terms
• Code Formatter – to implement consistent coding styles with minimal effort
• Class Explorer – for a configurable hierarchical view of class libraries throughout a project and enabling fast navigation to declarations and implementations and now available for C++Builder
• Data Visualizers – that make debugging easier by displaying visual representations of data in definable forms
• Debugger Thread Control – to freeze, thaw and isolate individual threads within applications during debugging to track down problems faster

“The productivity gains from these enhancements will save developers time as they find files easier and understand code better,” said Michael Swindell, vice president of products, Embarcadero Technologies. “By increasing productivity, Embarcadero is helping developers to meet the challenging business demands, faster and with increased innovation and understanding.”

The IDE enhancements will benefit Embarcadero^® All-Access™ with the upcoming versions of Delphi and C++Builder as well as Delphi 2009 and 2007 added into the version mix and accessible from within the All-Access client. Embarcadero All-Access enables customers to select from one of four All-Access levels providing on-demand access to the entire Embarcadero tool chest.

The Borland and CodeGear IDE tools business lives on with Embarcadero’s strong commitment to continued innovation in the product roadmap. Throughout August, Embarcadero will be showcasing sneak previews to show what’s in store for RAD Studio 2010 with its new 2010 versions of Delphi, C++Builder and Delphi Prism™. To view the latest sneak peek blogs and videos on RAD Studio 2010, visit www.embarcadero.com/rad-studio-2010.

About Embarcadero Technologies

Embarcadero Technologies, Inc. is a leading provider of award-winning tools for application developers and database professionals so they can design systems right, build them faster and run them better, regardless of their platform or programming language. Ninety of the Fortune 100 and an active community of more than three million users worldwide rely on Embarcadero products to increase productivity, reduce costs, simplify change management and compliance and accelerate innovation. Founded in 1993, Embarcadero is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices located around the world. Embarcadero is online at www.embarcadero.com.

Embarcadero, the Embarcadero Technologies logos and all other Embarcadero Technologies product or service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of Embarcadero Technologies, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Download the CodeGear RAD Studio 2009 Trial now and get started

Chris Pattinson, Director of Quality Assurance, spoke to us this week regarding his role at Embarcadero Technologies – a database tools and developer software company.  After watching the video I hope you’ll read an excerpt from a blog post Chris recently wrote (July 2009).

Software quality assurance (SQA) consists of a means of monitoring the software engineering processes and methods used to ensure quality. The methods by which this is accomplished are many and varied, and may include ensuring conformance to one or more standards, such as ISO 9000 or CMMI.

Why Quality Assurance?

I’ve now had almost a decade in the Quality Assurance field of software development, and while all folks understand the importance of testing, the understanding and measuring of the real value of a quality assurance organization can be difficult to determine.

From my personal view, a well run quality organization achieves three majors goals:

• Visibility
• Control
• Reduces Development Debt incurred by Bugs

By visibility, the more mature the testing organization is, the faster and more effectively problems are found and the impact of problems are understood. When a bug is reported, a mature organization can analyze the frequency and impact of such an issue, then once it’s analyzed create an effective automated test to ensure that once the issue is fixed, it stays fixed.

Visibility is more then just detecting the bug as well – the requirement for a feature may be ambiguous or incomplete leading to inefficiencies in development. And then other processes such as code reviews, project planning, and release processes could all have areas that if improved, not only ensure a product is shipped of good quality but that the process to do so is lean, mean and very effective – less waste of one of the most precious resources : Time.

Control is achieved by clearly defined milestones and acceptance criteria to validate that milestone. It’s easy to say you have your first Beta build with no qualifications, however if you state the beta build needs to have certain functionality and bug thresholds, then you can ensure the team aims for those goals and can keep a project ‘health’ in good shape.  You can also ensure that when you release a product to market, you clearly understand it’s state and can more confidently predict revenue.  Also, public beta’s advertise how your organization cares about a product, and customers can feel part of the development process – as well as help other customers learn and use the product.

QA in itself does not fix a product – however QA ENABLES the R&D team to fix a product and better meet a customer’s needs. And with highly visible test systems that run frequently, this adds huge value to R&D – the sooner a bug is detected the easier it is to fix.

Now, the first two factors are hard to measure. Development Debt can be measured on the time it takes for developers to work on bug fixing during a product cycle. This work can be measured against customer satisfaction to understand the development cost of bugs to achieve certain satisfaction levels. A well run development process with mature quality organization can be truly agile and spend more time on features, and less on bug fixing since the cost of fixing a bug found quickly after introduced is hugely less then found later.

Take the simple scenario – an engineer modifies a feature and a manual tester looks at it, and certifies it’s ok. However a bug now occurs in another feature that depended on a property that was modified and this other feature wasn’t tested. Worst case, the customer finds the issue weeks or months later after many other code changes – the time to investigate, and the dependencies of OTHER code on this initial change would typically cause a lot of work and headaches for both R&D and QA, ultimately making it hard to fix the issue without causing OTHER side-effects.

Ultimately, R&D ‘feels’ less work was done, however if the issue was caught and fixed, the Development Debt is less for the next release, meaning more exciting features . It’s clear how this is a huge benefit of a well run QA organization.

There are other advantages too – once you have visibility you can find opportunities for new features and understand what the customer is really asking for, not what you are assuming they are asking for. You may find that you thought customers always use your product in one way, or one feature that is really important to them. You may also find areas in the development process that if you improve, dramatically improve overall team productivity.