Industry General News & Trends: Special Report: Borland BorCon 2001 By Mike Prestwood

Posted 22 years ago on 8/29/2002 and updated 8/29/2002 Take Away: Borland's annual developer conference was held this month in Long Beach CA. Attending the conference for Prestwood were Scott Wehrly, Mike Prestwood, and Kim Berry.  Tags: borland borcon KB100027

Special Report: Borland's BorCon 2001
by Mike Prestwood, Scott Wehrly, and Kim Berry

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Left to right: Scott Wehrly, Mike Prestwood, Kim Berry

Borland's annual developer conference was held this month in Long Beach CA. Attending the conference for Prestwood were Scott Wehrly, Mike Prestwood, and Kim Berry.

How's Borland doing?

Borland has been profitable for the last 7 quarters. This last quarter Borland was more profitable than in any quarter in the last 9 YEARS! They have just released Delphi 6, Kylix, and JBuilder 5.

Emerging Technologies

Borland is continuing its focus on leading and emerging technologies. While JBuilder 4 and 5 has been leading the Java world and winning lots of awards the Delphi development team continues its focus on emerging technologies. Delphi 6 new features include compiler-level support for SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and WSDL (Web Services Description Language). That means programmers will be able to Web-enable their applications without writing extra code.

Borland's new technology push is toward web based services and solutions.  The trinity of new technological solutions in Delphi is DataSnap, WebSnap, and BizSnap.

DataSnap is the new Delphi 6 name for MIDAS. DataSnap now allows Delphi developers the capability of creating web-enabled database middleware. The TClientDataSet component, a resourceful element of the old MIDAS technology, is now available in the Professional Edition of Delphi 6.

WebSnap, formerly known as WebBroker, is Borland's new platform for building Web services.

BizSnap, which integrates with DataSnap and WebSnap, is the first development solution to support XML, XSDL, and SOAP in Web services.

The BDE has been deprecated

The BDE is going away in a couple of years. The heir apparent to the throne is dbExpress, but until dbExpress supports more platforms developers can either stick with the BDE or use ADO.

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Mike Prestwood (left) from Prestwood Software &  Consulting and Jerry Coffey (Editor-In-Chief for  Delphi Informant)

Borland's Booth

TurboPower's Booth

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The Display Floor

As usual the display floor contained a who's who of Delphi and industry leading companies that included Microsoft, IBM, TurboPower, The Informant Group (publishers of Delphi Informant), Advantage, etc. Although Prestwood wasn't there this year, look for us to have a presence at the May 2002 Borland Conference.

Keynotes

The first keynote began with Developer Relations VP David Intersimone, dressed as one of the apes from Stanley Kubrick's "2001 A Space Odyssey", smashing the "Inprise Logo" to the theme of "Also Spake Zarathustra", ending in the appearance of a monolithic "Borland" logo, to a raucous round of applause.  Borland president and CEO Dale Fuller followed by announcing, "Borland is back. The name change is not just cosmetic. It signals a change in our company, bringing it closer to its roots, its core competency, which we believe to be around the implementation of e-business applications - hence the theme of this year's conference."

The second Keynote was by Lee Wright, Head of Strategic Partnerships - Americas Nokia, Inc. He predicts there will be 50 million Java-enabled devices in 2002. So while this market isn't "here yet," it is coming soon. 

Some standards are beginning to emerge. Symbian O/S is becoming the O/S of choice, with a C++ SDK. JBuilder includes a "mobile set" allowing development of applications on this platform. Delphi is capable of writing server apps, using the de-facto standard xHTML rather than HTML to format responses to the device. 

Lee warns that developing for this platform is like stepping back to 1982 in terms of limitations imposed by the hardware. Nonetheless, Nokia is seeking the "next killer application" and will support developers with a vision. Visit http://americas.forum.nokia.com for more developer information.

The final Keynote was titled "Success in the Internet New Economy" by Guy Kawasaki, CEO, Garage Technology Ventures. Guy's keynote was based upon his latest book, "Rules for Revolutionaries," which was given to all conference attendees. His dynamic presentation explained the ten things a revolutionary must do to succeed in today's business climate.

MPG Keynote

Click Here to view a 15 second MPG file of one of the keynotes. We wanted to include this so that you can get a flavor of what the keynotes were like. Although you only see a small portion of the crowd, there were thousands of developers in attendance.

The Sessions

Borland presented over 50 sessions based on the following solution tracks: e-Business, Design & Architecture, RAD, Web/Internet, Emerging Technologies, Wireless, Windows, Java, Linux, JBuilder, Delphi, Kylix, C++Builder, Enterprise Products, and Interbase. Nearly all the sessions we attended were excellent. The skill set and presentation skills of all the presenters was outstanding. Our only regret is that we couldn't attend more sessions because at any one time there were 5 or 6 sessions going on.

Click Here for a 15 second MPG of Robert Schieck's presentation on Maximizing Performance with Delphi and Interbase. We provide this so that you can get a feel as to what the sessions are like.

Aquarium Mixer

This years casual mixer was Long Beach's aquarium. The food was great and the creatures fascinating. Click here for an MPG video of one of the aquarium's occupants (a jelly fish). The quiet environment was perfect for networking with other attendees. Lisa Prestwood (Mike's wife) went the day before and she said the aquarium was at least 10 times more crowded with just the Borland conference attendees than with the general public.

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