September 26, 1996
Borland International Inc. (Nasdaq: BORL) today announced it has shipped to resellers and corporate customers its first pure Internet product - Borland(R) IntraBuilder(TM). IntraBuilder and IntraBuilder Professional, both currently shipping, are the complete toolsets available for easily building and maintaining live, data-driven Intranet applications over local web servers.
Announced at Borland's Seventh Annual Developer's Conference in late July, IntraBuilder employs well-proven Borland object, language, rapid application development and database tool technologies.
After more than 40,000 pre-release versions downloads, a new 30-day trial version of IntraBuilder is now available for evaluation, without charge, over the Web at www.borland.com. In addition, for seven days beginning October 21, 1996, users may download the trial version directly from Netscape Communications Corporation's home page.
Users already report developing IntraBuilder beta applications ranging from distributing x-ray and lab results at a community hospital to scheduling industrial power for major interstate electrical power grids.
"IntraBuilder is a first for Borland and a first for IS organizations who want to immediately leverage their investments in database technology onto the intranet," said Michael Greenbaum, vice president of Worldwide Marketing for Borland. "Borland has once again delivered the right combination of object-oriented programming support, powerful development tools and robust client/server access in this world-class visual development tool."
Combining Borland's rich database tools with JavaScript(TM) -- the new web scripting language developed by Netscape Communications Corporation and Sun Microsystems -- Borland(R) IntraBuilder(TM) is a complete collection of developer tools that lets corporate intranet webmasters and database developers easily create and deploy live-data applications over the web. With robust, visual two-way tools, IntraBuilder users can quickly create web database solutions in JavaScript over intranets without traditional programming. JavaScript(TM) is an open, cross-platform Java-based scripting language that lets developers quickly and easily build a new generation of network applications for their intranets.
"Borland IntraBuilder is a great tool for JavaScript-based intranet development," said Mike Homer, senior vice president of Marketing at Netscape. "IntraBuilder lets enterprise developers build open, cross-platform intranet applications on the NetscapeOne(TM) platform."
Dana S. Kaufman, chief technical officer of Apogee Information Systems, Inc., a data-driven Web application development firm, said: "IntraBuilder truly exploits the power and promise of JavaScript, making it far easier for us to create data-driven Internet and intranet applications for corporate clients."
Evan Quinn, research manager at International Data Corp. of Framingham, Mass, said, "The shift from building document-centric to data-centric applications for the Intranet is clearly underway. IntraBuilder's easy-to-use data driven approach should appeal to a variety of developers, from power users, to Webmasters, to client/server developers."
"IntraBuilder has great potential to be the market leader in intranet application development tools. It's powerful, easy to use, and easy to learn," said Neal Garber of Tool Builders of America in Rochester, New York. "IntraBuilder will allow us to quickly develop and deploy Intranet applications to provide easier electronic access to information."
IntraBuilder will be available in three different configurations:
* To be sold at retail, IntraBuilder(TM), designed for small workgroup applications, will include Netscape Navigator(TM) Gold client software along with Borland's Web Server with local data access to Access(TM), FoxPro, dBASE and Paradox data and carries a suggested retail price of $99.95.
* IntraBuilder(TM) Professional includes Netscape FastTrack Server(TM) software, as well as the Netscape Navigator(TM) Gold, and is designed for higher volume applications and includes local data support for desktop formats as well as remote data access to Microsoft SQL Server and Borland InterBase database servers. In addition to supporting these popular data formats IntraBuilder(TM) Professional supports industry standard web servers including Netscape and Microsoft and any supporting NSAPI, ISAPI, CGI interfaces. Designed for database and web developers, IntraBuilder Professional is priced at $499.95 and will be sold through select corporate resellers, select VARs and direct from Borland.
* Scheduled to ship later this year, IntraBuilder(TM) Client/Server is designed for high-volume scalable applications implemented at large companies through decentralized and centralized IT organizations. The Client/Server version offers all features of the Professional version plus high performance access to remote data on Oracle, Sybase, Informix and DB2 or any other remote server through Microsoft's ODBC. IntraBuilder Client/Server, sold direct from Borland and through select VARs, carries a price of $1,995.
IntraBuilder creates dynamic data-based HTML pages on demand, and also creates web-based data-entry forms or dynamic reports automatically so developers needn't learn the JavaScript or HTML languages. Yet IntraBuilder allows easy modifications via full access to the JavaScript application source code.
IntraBuilder embraces existing and emerging standards. Employing the Borland Database Engine, IntraBuilder incorporates links to ODBC and also provides an open architecture to support emerging Internet standards such as Java applets and ActiveX controls.
Other IntraBuilder features include:
* Experts that help developers design tables, home pages, forms and reports quickly and easily.
* IntraBuilder contains more than 20 Visual Property Builders to guide users through all the appropriate options for an object property. Visual Property Builders help users fine tune the properties of any control or form.
* With Two-Way Tools programmers have the flexibility to use the visual designers or the code editor interchangeably, they can have all the productivity of the visual environment and all the control of direct access to source code. Even so, the JavaScript language is easy to learn and use, and yet it contains sophisticated features such as a dynamic object model, associative arrays and code blocks.
* IntraBuilder contains a complete set of database administration tools for creating tables on remote servers, defining referential integrity rules and encrypting tables.