RemObjects SDK for Xcode is a brand new edition of the award-winning cross-platform remoting framework, extending RemObjects SDK to its now third developer platform: native Mac and iOS development in Xcode, using Objective-C and Cocoa.

With Macs gaining market share and the iPhone and iPad emerging as a strong new development platform, many ISV and enterprise developers are looking to extend their distributed applications to these two new platforms – and RemObjects SDK is the easy yet powerful way to do this, without sacrificing existing investment in .NET or Delphi based server technology.

RemObjects SDK supports Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and later, on Intel and PowerPC based Macintosh computers for both 32bit and 64bit applications, as well as iOS 3.0 higher on both iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

It is fully ready for Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) and iOS5.

New in the “October 2009” Release: SOAP

Among many other new features and improvements (see the full change log), the “October 2009” release introduces full support for writing SOAP clients that can talk to any Web Service using the standard Simple Object Access Protocol, regardless of the platform or toolset the server is implemented with. This opens up RemObjects SDK for OS X to create applications for the Mac and iPhone that can not only talk to servers created with RemObjects SDK for .NET or Delphi, but a wide variety of available services.

Target Audience

In its current release, RemObjects SDK for OS X is targeted mainly at existing users of RO, who are looking to extend their application development to OS X clients. Whether you have existing service applications that you want to make accessible to clients using iPhones or Mac computers, or want to build new solutions, the three available editions of RemObjects SDK make it really easy to build servers using .NET/Mono (deployable to Windows, Linux and Mac servers) or Delphi, and to create matching native client applications for the Mac and iPhone.

However, the new addition of full SOAP support makes RemObjects SDK for OS X attractive to pure Xcode developers, as well, allowing them to access existing SOAP services ut ther eon the web – or implemented by themselves using other toolkits.Future versions will expand RemObjects SDK to also allow the creation of native servers in Objective-C.

And of course our newly released Data Abstract for Xcode makes the RO/DA combo the best option for building powerful database applications for Mac and iPhone. Data Abstract for Xcode is available now, and includes RemObjects SDK.

On the Shoulders of Giants

Because every development platform has its unique strengths and unique paradigms for software development, we at RemObjects do not believe in blindly porting our frameworks across different platforms. Instead, just as we did when we first introduced RemObjects SDK to its second platform, Microsoft .NET, we took a look at the experience and expertise we gathered from writing the previous versions, and created a brand new product, written from the ground to fit in well with its surrounding platform, but at the same time based on the architecture that made its predecessors great.

This allows RemObjects SDK for OS X to be the best version of RemObjects SDK yet, leveraging all the knowledge we have gained over the past seven years, but also learning from the mistakes that were made in previous editions.

The result is a framework that is designed from the ground up for Cocoa and Objective-C, and fits in well and feels intuitive for experienced Mac developers. At the same time, it maintains the architecture and flexibility that existing RemObjects SDK users have come to love and appreciate with the framework, making sure they, whether coming from RemObjects SDK for Delphi or .NET, will feel right at home with the new edition, and will be productive from the get-go, without having to learn new concepts.

From Messages and Channels over Envelopes, Remote Services to how advanced concepts such as Authentication and Session Management work, all your existing expertise will apply.

left to right:
A RemObjects SDK app running on iPhone and Mac — RemObjects SDK in Xcode — Bonjour discovery for RO Servers