Tools Vendors Build Relationships at MacWorld

Sybase is offering a free 'early adopter' download of it's Adaptive Server Enterprise running on OS X. "It's our first Mac product," explained Sybase Technical Director Steve Olsen. The product's official release is scheduled for September, to coincide with Apple's OS X 10.2 upgrade, code-named "Jaguar." "We're very familiar with Berkeley System Unix, so when it showed up in Mac OS X, it was an old friend. Our question was, 'is it for real?', and it is. It's rock-solid." Olsen said.

FileMaker demonstrated FileMaker Pro 6. The venerable Mac desktop database has already sprouted web, ODBC and relational support, and the newest version, announced earlier this month, ups the ante with XML import/export capability. Duncan Shen, product manager said the company look to FileMaker to provide 'universal information exchange', both as a standalone product and as a front-end to other data sources.

Metrowerks CodeWarrior 8, released in May, supports Mac OS development in C, C++, Objective C, and Java languages. The new version adds support for Mac OS X's Cocoa library to build native OS X applications, according to Metrowerks Andy Mastronardi.

Two vendors timed releases specifically for the MacWorld event. According to Real Software's Lorin Rivers, the company is planning upgrades to it's Real Basic programming environment to coincide with MacWorld shows every six months. "We can address changes in the environment" on a timely basis, Rivers explained, rather than posting "monolithic" upgrades on a less regular schedule. RealBasic 4.5, released Wednesday, adds support for the popular MySQL open source database, along with enhanced graphics and multimedia support.

Borland's J.Builder 7, also released this week, provides tool for building Java applications targeted to a wide range of J2EE applications servers, including those from IBM, BEA, Oracle and Borland's Enterprise Server. Borland Senior Developer Relations Manager Anders Ohlsson demonstrated the development environment, along with the Optimizeit Suite for debugging and accellerating Java-based applications.