Borland Software at its BorCon conference in California this week will preview the upcoming "Diamondback" release of its Delphi development tool for the Microsoft platform, which is to support development via managed code.

Company executives provided few details on the product during an opening keynote at the conference on Sunday evening. But they promised much richer details would be provided on Monday. Diamondback, which is due soon, will feature support for managed code and multi-language functionality. It also will support re-factoring, unit testing and deployment and delivery of applications for the ASP.Net, Windows and .Net platforms, Borland officials said.

Managed code is Microsoft's concept for a managed execution environment to reduce typical programming mistakes that can lead to security holes and unstable applications.

"(Diamondback) will do native compiled code (on Windows) as well as managed code," said David Intersimone, vice president of developer relations and chief evangelist at Borland.

The company this week also will tout its "Software Delivery Optimization," or SDO, strategy for project management, which is intended to help developers deal with issues such as costly, last-minute changes in software projects, according to Dale Fuller, president and CEO of Borland.

"If you think about it, (SDO is) really just a roadmap to creating competitive advantage from your software by leveraging people, processes and technologies," Fuller said. He also described SDO as "ERP for software."

"Now, we have a view into why decisions are made and that helps us all around as we go forward," Fuller said.

Fuller also stressed the company's vow not to abandon developers and touched briefly on Borland's business prognosis. Borland, Fuller said, has had "gigantic" customers standardizing on Borland products. Borland also has had 18 consecutive quarters of profitability, Fuller said.