RAD Studio XE4 focuses on cross-platform apps

Embarcadero has released a new version of its RAD Studio development suite. RAD Studio XE4 is focused on platform-independent development of native applications. According to Embarcadero, applications written with RAD Studio provide cross-platform support from the basis of the same Delphi code – the company calls these "true native" applications. The new version of RAD Studio allows developers to write applications for Intel and ARM architectures including Windows, Mac OS X, iOS devices, and Surface Pro tablets.

RAD Studio XE4 includes an application framework for Windows, Mac OS X and iOS that is also supposed to support Android in the future, and a graphical design tool to create user interfaces for these applications. In the backend, the tool supports SQLite, InterBase Embedded ToGo and the IBLite database for iOS. Bindings for other databases such as Oracle, Sybase, DB2, InterBase, MySQL, and Microsoft's SQL Server are also available. For cloud connectivity, the platform supports Amazon's AWS and Windows Azure, as well as SOAP- and REST-based services.

RAD Studio includes the Delphi, C++Builder and HTML5 Builder development environments that allow developers to write applications of each of the three platforms. A new user licence for RAD Studio XE4 is available for £1,376.23 from the Embarcadero online store. A test version can also be downloaded free of charge. An overview of all new features in RAD Studio XE4 is available from the Embarcadero web site.

(fab)