PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) developers will get an assist from CodeGear on Tuesday, with the introduction of a rapid application development environment for the scripting language.

The Borland Software tools subsidiary plans to extend its Delphi Windows development environment to accommodate PHP, Windows Vista, and AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). Two products are to be introduced, including Delphi 2007for Win32, featuring enhanced support for Vista and AJAX, and Delphi for PHP, providing an IDE and open source VCL (visual component library) framework for PHP developers.

"Up until Delphi for PHP, there hasn’t been a RAD visual development environment and there's not been a component architecture for PHP that allows you to build reusable components," said David Intersimone, CodeGear vice president of developer relations and chief evangelist.

Featured is a visual drag-and-drop environment for component-based PHP Web application development.

The product provides a RAD environment that writes most of the PHP code for the developer, said a user of the product, Jonathan Benedicto, who uses CodeGear's technology to develop Web applications such as e-commerce systems.

"It's very, very good," Benedicto said. He owns JomiTech, a tools developer in Barrie, Ontario, Canada. The CodeGear product fills a market gap for a graphical tool for PHP development, he said.

With the Delphi 2007 for Win32 product, developers can recompile desktop and database applications to take on features such as Vista's Aero interface, Intersimone said.

"Developers need an easy way to take their applications that are not running on Vista and simply allow them to take advantage of all the Vista capability," Intersimone said.

Also, developers can build rich dynamic, data-driven Web applications with rich AJAX interfaces.

The product features the RAD DBX 4 database architecture for connecting applications to databases such as SQL Server, MySQL, and Oracle.

Both of the new Delphi products ship in March. Delphi 2007 for Win32 costs $1,999 for the Enterprise Edition. Delphi for PHP will be available for an introductory price of $249.

A new version of the company's multi-language developer tool, currently called Developer Studio, will add Vista support later this year.