SDD, the largest IT distributor in southern Africa, has announced the availability of the much vaunted Delphi 6 from Borland. After two years of development, Delphi 6 is the new flagship version of Borland's rapid application development (RAD) environment for the Windows operating system.
"The overriding feature of Delphi 6 is that it is the first RAD environment to help developers easily use and create emerging industry standard Web Services, such as XML (Extensible Markup Language)- and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)-based technologies," states Werner Obermeyer, Borland product manager at SDD. Delphi 6 Web Services technologies speed e-business by enabling companies to automate the secure sharing and exchange of business information over the Internet.
In addition to supporting the emerging industry standards: XML, SOAP, WSDL (Web Services Description Language) and XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language) Delphi 6 also supports emerging Web Services-based vendor platforms .Net and Biztalk from Microsoft, Oracle .NOW and ONE from Sun Microsystems. "This provides developers with a scalable and dependable RAD environment within which to create and use the emerging Web Services," says Obermeyer.
The new Delphi framework, including BizSnap, WebSnap and DataSnap, has been specifically designed to offer developers a faster time-to-market by simplifying business-to-business integration. Speed and ease of deployment were base factors when designing Delphi 6.
New features to Delphi 6:
* BizSnap - a Web services platform designed for building B-to-B integration components.
* WebSnap - a Web page designer that will simplify the job of building and debugging Web applications.
* DataSnap - a Web services-enabled middleware environment for building database access.
"Web Services are fast becoming the essential tools in application development on the Internet because they allow the cross-pollination of core competencies between two businesses on the Internet. This is therefore a critical environment for e-business. Delphi 6 allows businesses to take full advantage of the burgeoning Web Services environment," explains Obermeyer. SDD offers a comprehensive range of Borland products.
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SDD, the focused IT company in the Siltek Technology Chain Group, is SA's largest broad-based distributor of information technology. SDD encourages black empowerment opportunities and is the partner of choice of several leading vendors. It distributes a wide range of 'best of breed' hardware and software products, as well as peripherals, components and consumables.
SDD configures branded hardware and builds-to-order Xylo, Vision and Fujitech, its own range of PCs. SDD has branches in Gauteng, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London, Durban, Bloemfontein, Nelspruit and Namibia. Outside SA, the company has partnerships in Botswana and Zimbabwe.
Siltek Limited
Siltek Limited leads the southern African technology supply chain. Listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 1969, Siltek comprises several complementary operating companies, each of which is a key player in its niche focus area.
Siltek Limited is grouped into three main operating divisions, namely Volume Distribution, Specialist Distribution and Supply Chain Services. Companies in the Volume division are SDD, Workgroup and MemtekMMW. Specialist Distribution consists of Siltek Telecoms, Chemetrix, Siltek Healthcare Solutions, Siltek Midrange Solutions and Intelligent Systems. Imperitek, Merchandise IT and Siltek Finance make up the Supply Chain Services division.
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