Kylix 3.0 Enterprise (with C++)

Product review of new Kylix release.

Kylix is a powerful RAD (rapid application development) tool. All three flavors of Kylix 3.0 (Open, Professional and Enterprise) come with both C++ and Delphi (Pascal) compilers. The Enterprise edition I reviewed comes with more than 190 components for rapid application development. On top of generic GUI-building components, it also comes with Borland's dbExpress architecture, which enables native access to DB2, Oracle9i, Informix, Informix SE, InterBase, MySQL and PostgreSQL databases. It also comes with BizSnap, WebSnap and DataSnap components, which enable easy development of web services that interoperate with enterprise databases.

The Kylix 3.0 Enterprise package contains a lot of documentation:

  • Quick Start Guide: an introduction to the product. You will learn how to customize the IDE, and it will also give you an idea of the terminology used to describe various parts of the user interface and its functions.

  • Kylix Developers Guide: a decent-sized book with in-depth information on usage and development with Kylix. It contains numerous code examples in both C++ and Delphi syntax. It also gives a rather detailed description of the CLX component library. Most of the CLX components are portable between Windows and Linux. For the components that are not portable, this guide has a whole chapter dedicated to porting applications from Windows to Linux.

  • Delphi Language Guide: the name of this guide says it all. It comes in handy if you've never used Object Pascal but are interested in learning. It also can be a good reference if you are a Delphi programmer.

  • CLX (pronounced “clicks”) Object Hierarchy poster: this poster shows in an easy-to-read tree view how all the CLX components (objects) fit together. It uses color coding to represent the editions of Kylix in which the objects are available. The Enterprise edition has the most components, and the Open edition has the least.

  • Borland Solution Partner Resource Guide: creating components for Kylix is a business in itself. Many different companies write various components for Kylix. For a few hundred dollars, most of the solution partners will provide you with objects that can drastically cut down on your development time. A full list of solution partners is available at www.BorlandSolutions.com.

  • Kylix Enterprise (CD): contains the Kylix development executables, libraries and other resources, including source code for all the components. The full component source is useful, but because all the components were written in Delphi, they might be a bit hard to understand if you are not a Pascal buff. The CD also contains both C++ and Delphi versions of the compiler and a lot of sample code. After installing the software, take a look at the examples in the kylix3/examples/ directory and the tutorials in the kylix3/documentation directory.

  • Companion Tools (CD): I definitely recommend browsing through this CD as it includes a lot of nice tools. This software doesn't belong to Borland; the tools were written by individuals, groups or corporations. Here you will find various components such as compression, profiling, scripting and game components. Each and every tool comes with its own license, and it's nice to find a lot of open-source code under the GPL and LGPL.

  • Enterprise Server (CD): here you will find Borland's application server. The server comes with a development license; a deployment license key needs to be obtained separately.

  • Rave Reports (CD): this visual designer by Nevrona Design lets you create custom reports. Once you start the designer, you can point and click to design the look of your report. You can generate reports through different data sources, including database lookups. Once you have your design ready, you save the design into a file, which is later used by calling on the Rave components to generate a report.

Installation

On the installation CD are several text files that you should probably read before installing. They contain descriptions of caveats associated with the installation, development, building and deployment process. After reading the text files on the CD, I ran the installation script. The software can be installed in text mode or graphical mode under X. The script will check to see if it can make a connection to the X server. If it can, the installation process will run under X. This portion of the installation actually uses the Loki installer, and everything is pretty straightforward. One problem was that it didn't create the KDE icons, despite the fact that I checked the box for the installer to do so.

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Re: Product Review: Kylix 3.0 Enterprise (with C++)

Anonymous's picture

I haven't used this product yet, but I'm thinking to start doing so in the next 2 months, I need to know if anyone out there is running this on an Intel-Compatible platform, say AMD Athlon processor architecture.

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