REALbasic 2009 R2 continues the recent trend of adding a few new things, adding some enhancements, and a lot of bug fixes.  According to Real Software, there are over 70 improvements and 18 new features. 

REAL Studio Introduced

For better or worse, there are now three versions of REALbasic.  Real Software today introduced the new REAL Studio ($1495) edition which is more of an enterprise edition of RB.  The Personal edition pretty much stays the same feature set and price ($99) while the Professional edition gets cheaper ($299) but also loses some features.

The code profiler and IDE Scripting are now exclusive to REAL Studio.  New to Studio is a license key that works on all three supported platforms, priority technical support, and updates are for 12 months rather than the current 6.  Also included is a license for REAL Server with an unlimited connections license.

Real Software has stated that some new features will be Studio-only in the future.  More details here http://www.realsoftwareblog.com/2009/03/we-are-listening.html.  This should help differentiate the Studio edition even further.

Date Class

The date class has a few new useful additions.  The first is two new constructors that are used like this:

//First New Constructor
dim d as new date(iYear, iMonth, iDay, iHour, iMinute, iSecond)

//Second New Constructor
dim d as new date(iYear, iMonth, iDay, iHour, iMinute, iSecond, dblGMTOffset)

In the first case all of the parameters except year get a default value.  So doing this:

dim d as new date(2009)

will result in a new date set to January 01, 2009 using the local GMT offset.

In the second case the GMT offset is added which allows to you quickly and easily set different time zones than the current one.

These changes are useful because they cut down on the amount of code that one has to type.  I think they're going to be very useful if you work with a lot of dates.

Listbox Changes

The listbox continues to get some love.  New in this release is a new method and set of enums to make the listbox header not sortable.  Use the new Listbox.HeaderTypes enum to set them.  The default functionality of the listbox header is sortable which means that the listbox will have mouse-over effects on the listbox and respond to a mouse click.  Use this bit of code to set a listbox heading to not sortable:

MyListBox.HeaderType(icolumn) = Listbox.HeaderTypes.NotSortable

Another addition to the listbox is the RowTag property.  Instead of stashing your data in a celltag, you can now put it in the RowTag property like this:

MyListBox.RowTag(iRow) = "Some Value"

This RowTag property is a variant so you can put what you want in it and should make life a little easier as many times data is associated with a 'row' of data.

Another addition is the ability to add a help tag to a cell.  When the user passes the mouse over the row, the helptag is displayed.  This is a nice touch and makes applications look polished.

MySQL Returns

The MySQL database plugin returns to REALbasic with the new MySQL Community version.  The plugin is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).  I won't get into the details but the basic gist (as I understand it) is that if you use any GPL code you, in turn, have make your source code available under the GPL.  Since this is a major limitation for anyone making commercial applications you might want to investigate further.

Real Software has announced a new MySQL Enterprise plugin that is not GPL that will require the purchase of an additional license.  No additional details on the Enterprise plugin at this time.

For more information, see http://www.realsoftwareblog.com/2009/04/mysql-sequel.html.

Oracle Database Plugin

The Oracle database plugin now works on the Mac.

BreakOnExceptions #Pragma

A new pragma was added called BreakOnExceptions that allows you to override the BreakOnExceptions menu.  This is handy if you have error conditions that are normal but happen on a regular basis that you don't want to break on.  Usage is like all other pragma calls and is only valid for the currently executing method.

IDE Scripting Changes

IDE Scripting has some new functionality.  First, there are two new methods to encrypt and decrypt items via script.  You can select items programmatically now using the SelectItem method.  You can now quit the IDE using the QuitIDE method.

One bug fix of note in IDE scripting was the Sublocations command. In the previous functionality it returned a list of objects delimited with spaces.  This was horrible because folders could have strings in them and made using it very difficult.  The list is now separated by tabs.

IDE Scripting is now a Studio Only feature.

IDE Changes

Creating a new subclass is a bit easier now.  When you open a new class/subclass the IDE will automatically expand the event handlers for you.  While not really big, anything to help you from using the use mouse all the time is big.

Updated COM Support

REALbasic 2009 R2 has better COM support for Windows applications.  It's still not perfect but it is certainly a step in the right direction.  William Wu, one of the Real Software engineers, put together a very brief UTube video showing how it works at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbJEG0tWazI.

Better COM support is a welcome update.  Windows developers can now take advantage of the plethora of COM objects available in Windows.  This should make developing for Windows easier.

Conclusion

All-in-all, REALbasic 2009 Release 2 appears to be a very solid release.  The listbox enhancements and the number of bug fixes make it a worthy upgrade.  Some developers, however might find the new tiered product offering a little distasteful but in tough economic times I applaud RS for trying something new.  Bring on Cocoa!