Borland International has released additional details about its acquisition of Ashton-Tate and has officially introduced a forthcoming Windows version of its Paradox database software and a dBase-compatible product currently called Object dBase. Borland said the two new products will make extensive use of object-oriented design enabling them both to access dBase and Paradox files as well as spreadsheet files and SQL databases. The new products will incorporate object-oriented features on the user level a each element of the user interface will behave as an object. By pressing the right button while holding the mouse cursor on an object, a user will be able to access the property inspector – or small menu – for that object. Via the inspector a user can change various aspects of that object, such as colour, position, font, etc. The user will also be able to attach a method to an object; for example, modify a data field so that every time the mouse passes over it, the computer will display a small dialog box. Borland told Microbytes that the new database product will be compatible with almost all dBase III+ and IV commands and will be able to run dBase programs both as an interpreter/debugger and as a compiler. It will have extensions that will allow developers to create Windows applications. This product will use the same integrated development environment as Turbo Pascal for Windows and it will be compatible with Paradox forms and reports and will be able to do queries in the same way as Paradox does. No ship dates or prices given.
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