Developer Express
Developer Express is a software development company based in the United States. It produces a wide variety of tools mainly for Borland Delphi, C++ Builder and Microsoft Visual Studio developers. Currently, it is mainly known for its visual components that allow developers to easily replicate the UI of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office applications. The most popular products are VCL components (including ExpressQuantumGrid, ExpressBars, ExpressScheduler, etc) and .NET Windows Forms components (currently well-known under the DXperience brand). Developer Express also gains growing popularity for its Visual Studio Productivity Tools, including CodeRush for Visual Studio .NET and Refactor! Pro.
Developer Express has won many awards in the industry for its products.
Visual Components for Microsoft and Borland Compilers
VCL Components for Windows Development (Delphi/C++ Builder)
The VCL market was the first target market for Developer Express. The Primary focus from the very beginning was on visual components that would allow developers to emulate applications like Microsoft Outlook. Thus, the very first components to Appear were the ExpressGrid (now known as the ExpressQuantumGrid) that allowed developers to present data in row-column format and the ExpressBars Suite that allowed developers to build an application's navigation system, including toolbars, main menu, status bar and a side bar.
These component suites evolved quickly, and, by version 3, the ExpressQuantumGrid had gained huge popularity among VCL developers. It was no longer just a grid control, but rather a comprehensive data editing library including numerous editor controls, such as combo boxes, spin editors, and more. Editors could be used as standalone controls or within grid cells which made in-place data editing much more convenient. Along with the grid control, Developer Express produced lots of similar or smaller components, including the ExpressMasterView (allowing developers to display read-only master-detail information), ExpressQuantumTreeList (a grid / tree hybrid control), ExpressInspector (allowing to present data like Object Inspector does), and others.
The company quickly expanded and soon became one of the leading component developers for the VCL market. As a sign of industry recognition in the VCL market, Developer Express has received numerous Delphi Informat Magazine awards. The ExpressQuantumGrid was recognized as the Best Product of the Year for four consequent years - 2001 through 2004, and Developer Express was awarded Company of the Year in 2003.
After The Release of the ExpressQuantumGrid v3, Developer Express VCL team had a lot of IDeaS for enhancing the grid control and the entire component library. Because Microsoft was continuing to release new Office and Windows visual solutions, Developer Express needed a better library to support multiple look and feel options. The grid also needed to be enhanced with the ability to present master-detail data and to have multiple data representation formats - grid, cards, charts, etc. Thus, the ExpressQuantumGrid v4 was a complete re-write with a brand new grid control and editors library. This re-write also gave start to a new set of controls based on The New shared library. These controls include the ExpressScheduler (an emulation of the Microsoft Outlook Calendar), ExpressVerticalGrid (an extended version of ExpressInspector), ExpressPivotGrid (an emulation of Microsoft PivotTable used in Excel and Access), and a revamped ExpressQuantumTreeList.
The Developer Express VCL product line, the oldest and most recognizable, is still in ACTIVE development. The sixth version of the ExpressQuantumGrid was recently released. ExpressBars 6 has also been released, with full support for developing applications with Microsoft's Ribbon UI, support for alpha-blended images, direct support for embedding ExpressEditors (the entire in-place editor library from ExpressQuantumGrid) and more. Next up for the VCL is a complete skinning solution, ExpressSkins, for their VCL product line.
The ExpressWeb Framework
The VCL was extended with the WebSnap and WebBroker technologies with the release of Borland Delphi 6. Many 3rd party component vendors made attempts to create a more developer-friendly platform for web development based on these technologies. Developer Express was among them. Inspired by the Microsoft's ASP.NET platform, it built its ExpressWeb Framework. This product allowed Delphi developers to create web sites using s WYSIWYG HTML page editor integrated into the IDE. The Framework also provided numerous native server-side controls - from labels and editors to trees and grids.
The ExpressWeb Framework, as well as the ExpressQuantumGrid, were members of project Dionysus. This project was a collection of products from 13 leading developer tool vendors. The collection included all of the components one might need for software development. It was marketed as a more complete and cost affective solution for developers to buy Delphi Professional together with Dionysus components rather than Delphi Architect EDition.
ActiveX Components
After Developer Express had been recognized as a leading software component developer for the VCL, the company decided to create a new division that would aim on another popular platform - ActiveX. There was a huge community of Microsoft Visual Studio developers, and especially Visual Basic developers, and there was already a great market of tools and visual components for these developers. To enter this market, Developer Express released a set of tools mainly duplicating the functionality of its leading VCL products. They were given slightly different names - the prefix spelling was changed from Express to Xpress (XpressQuantumGrid, XpressQuantumTreeList, XpressEditors, XpressInspector, XpressSideBar).
There wasn't much time until Microsoft announced its intention to produce an entirely new development platform - the .NET Framework. Developer Express has decided to continue supporting its ActiveX products, but make main focus on this new promising platform. Thus, ActiveX products didn't make it to the leading products in the industry, but still they are recognized as high-quality products which continue to be sold and supported presently. With the release of .NET components, there was a popularity splash for ActiveX controls also, since this was the time when Developer Express was really recognized as one of the leading software component developers for Microsoft Visual Studio.
.NET Windows Forms Components
When the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2002 was in early Beta stages, Developer Express had already started to research the forthcoming .NET Framework and develop components for it. In fact, Developer Express is believed to be the first vendor to offer commercial visual components for Visual Studio .NET. Once again, the product prefixes were changed to distinguish between components for different platforms. .NET framework components got the Xtra prefix.
Excluding the XtraSideBar, which was quite simple and later replaced by a more powerful XtraNavBar component, the first .NET product produced by Developer Express was the XtraGrid. Grid components proved to be one of the most sought after products in developer tool markets, hence this decision to produce another grid. The XtraGrid was designed at the same time as the VCL grid version 4 (a complete re-write of the leading product). Thus, these grids got similar architectures based on several years of experience in component development. Taking advantage of advanced data access, painting and other features provided by the .NET Framework, the Developer Express .NET Research and Development Team was able to deliver a grid control with almost the same feature set as the VCL version even in its very first edition.
Like with the VCL product line, the main efforts were put in developing components that emulate Microsoft Office. Some of the components available now in the Developer Express .NET product line are: XtraScheduler (emulates Microsoft Outlook Calendar), XtraCharts(a graphing / charting component), XtraPivotGrid (emulates Microsoft PivotTable used in Excel and Access), XtraBars (emulates navigation interfaces like in Microsoft Office - toolbars, menus, dock windows, ribbons, etc).
Developer Express first sold all its components individually or as a part of the annual subscription service that included all products for Microsoft Compilers (Windows and Web components, productivity tools, ActiveX components, etc). Later .NET Windows Forms components were joined into a separate package named .NET Windows Forms Component Collection. With growing product set, the need for a more convenient naming has emerged. Thus, this Collection has evolved into the currently well-known DXperience Professional product. DXperience Enterprise (the complete product set for Microsoft Compilers) and DXperience ASP.NET (Web development tools) editions are also available.
ASP.NET Components
The ASP.NET Research and Development Team appeared in Developer Express a little later than the first controls for the .NET Windows Forms platform were released. From the very beginning, there were two major directions - data-aware controls and navigation utilities. The first release for ASP.NET was the ASPxNavigation Suite that included ASPxMenu, ASPxNavBar and ASPxPopupControl. Then there was the ASPxGrid Suite - another grid control from Developer Express, now for the ASP.NET platform. From a single control library, the ASPxGrid has evolved into a library of AbOUT 20 controls including numerous editors to be used either standalone or within grid cells.
The list of data aware controls was then enlarged by two products that were designed to be used in both Windows Forms and ASP.NET applications. These were a reporting system and a charting control - XtraReports and XtraCharts.
With the release of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and .NET Framework 2, Developer Express has completely re-designed its web development framework and released a new version of the ASPxNavigation Suite - designed to work with only ASP.NET 2. Following the new navigation library, a web version of the pivot grid control has been built on the same internal development framework - the ASPxPivotGrid Suite.
Reporting/Printing Tools
Reporting tools are among the most requested in software development. There has always been the need to make printed copies of data in various formats. There are two approaches to add such functionality to an application, both of which are supported by Developer Express products.
The first approach to enable reporting is to use a fully-functional reporting system that allows freehand report layout customization. This method offers almost limitless flexibility in report customization. The drawback, however, is that the editor typically supplied with this type of reporting system is too complex for most end-users.
The second approach is WYSIWYG printing of data-aware controls. For instance, one can print out a grid control or a scheduler. This makes it much easier for end-users to control what they print, since they can easily apply the desired data layout within the control - they don't have to deal with a separate report customization tool that is too flexible to be easily used.
Developer Express has a fully functional reporting tool for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET developers - the XtraReports Suite. Tools designed to print out a control's content are available in each product line. These are the ExpressPrinting System, XpressPrinting System and XtraPrinting Library for the VCL, ActiveX and .NET Framework respectively.
IDE Productivity Tools
In 2000, Developer Express announced the acquisition of Eagle Software’s complete product line, which included CodeRush, CDK, and reAct. All these products were productivity tools for Delphi and C++ Builder developers. As the result, Mark Miller joined Developer Express as Chief Architect of the newly created IDE Tools Division. Later on, this division shifted its focus exclusively to productivity tools for Microsoft Visual Studio. Presently, the following tools are available:
- CodeRush for Visual Studio .NET.
This product integrates into the Visual Studio IDE to allow you to write code faster. It provides a huge number of code navigation enhancements and context-sensitive short aliases that expand into larger code blocks thus making developers much more efficient.
- Refactor!
This product allows developers to re-shape their code without changing its functionality. It automates many refactorings such as extracting code lines into a separate method and makes them available via a single shortcut - no editing work is required. Refactorings are currently available for C# and Visual Basic. C++ and ASP.NET Refactor! editions are coming soon.
- DXCore
This is the library that enables developers to easly extend Microsoft Visual Studio. This library is used as the core for both CodeRush and Refactor! tools.
Refactor! Pro, was recognised by Microsoft as being so good that Microsoft's own internal Visual Basic development team chose not to develop a competing feature of their own. Instead, Microsoft chose to sponsor Refactor! for Visual Basic (a special edition version of Refactor!) making it available for free from Microsoft's own site for users of Visual Basic 2005.
Application Framework Libraries
One of the major future directions of Developer Express is Application Framework Libraries - libraries that make it easier to develop complex applications. The first step in this direction has been made with the release of the XPO library (eXpress Persistent Objects). This is an ORM Tool that allows developers to describe and manage data using native constructs of programming languages. For instance, to declare a data table, they need to declare a class, where properties are data fields. Data management tasks performed via code cause XPO to automatically apply the revelant changes to the underlying database (all popular DBMSs are supported).
The next step Developer Express is undertaking in this direction is the eXpressApp Framework (which includes XPO). This library was designed to make it much easier to develop business applications - such as accounting applications, for instance. Its main purpose is to free developers from repetitive programming tasks every time a new application is created. In addition to features provided by XPO, the eXpressApp Framework provides automatic user interface construction for both Windows and Web platforms. The Framework automatically generates an application with several modules designed to edit data structures that have been specified. Thus, developers are relieved of much of the tedium associated with supporting multiple DBMS and presentation layers. They can instead dedicate more time to the business logic of their applications.
Of course, the application modules automatically generated by the eXpressApp Framework mainly use Developer Express visual components to browse and edit data.
The eXpressApp Framework is still under construction - XAF Release Candidate 2 was announced on August 15, 2007.