ObjectPAL is short for Object-Oriented Paradox Application Language, which is the

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

used by the

Borland Paradox Paradox is a relational database management system currently published by Corel Corporation. It was originally released for MS-DOS by Ansa Software, and then updated by Borland after it bought the company. In mid 1991 Borland began the process to ...

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...

application (now owned by

Corel Cascade Parent Limited, doing business as Alludo (pronounced like "all you do"), is a Canadian software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, specializing in graphics processing. Formerly called the Corel Corporation ( ; from the abbreviation ...

). Paradox, now in its 11th version, is a constituent of Corel's Word Perfect X3 office suite, for 32-bit

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. The language is tightly-bound to the application's forms, and provides a very rapid and robust

development environment In software deployment, an environment or tier is a computer system or set of systems in which a computer program or software component is deployed and executed. In simple cases, such as developing and immediately executing a program on the same m ...

for creating database applications for Windows. ObjectPAL is not a full free-standing

object-oriented language Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of ...

. It belongs to the family of languages inspired by

Hypercard HyperCard is a software application and development kit for Apple Macintosh and Apple IIGS computers. It is among the first successful hypermedia systems predating the World Wide Web. HyperCard combines a flat-file database with a graphical, f ...

, with influences from PAL (wherever functionality could be kept the same),

Smalltalk Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed reflective programming language. It was designed and created in part for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, at the Learning Research Group (LRG) of Xerox PARC by Alan Ka ...

, and Garnet (a UI language created by Brad Myers). While its objects do encapsulate

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

, there is no support for polymorphism, and only a very limited

inheritance Inheritance is the practice of receiving private property, Title (property), titles, debts, entitlements, Privilege (law), privileges, rights, and Law of obligations, obligations upon the death of an individual. The rules of inheritance differ ...

concept, which is wedded to objects on a form which can be controlled by code placed on a higher object in a form's object hierarchy. However, for what it is, ObjectPAL provides a wideranging and versatile language for creating Paradox applications. The syntax and structure of the language resembles

Visual Basic Visual Basic is a name for a family of programming languages from Microsoft. It may refer to: * Visual Basic .NET (now simply referred to as "Visual Basic"), the current version of Visual Basic launched in 2002 which runs on .NET * Visual Basic (cl ...

, but knowing Visual Basic would only help someone new to ObjectPAL in the sense that any other programming skill would be transferable to ObjectPAL. ObjectPAL was the successor to PAL, which was the Paradox for

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

programming language. With the advent of Paradox for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

1.0 in 1993, which was then owned by

Borland Borland Software Corporation was a computer technology company founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad and Philippe Kahn. Its main business was the development and sale of software development and software deployment product ...

Corporation, ObjectPAL was born. Version 1.0 was quickly succeeded by version 4.5 that same year. It can be used as such as a web server scripting language when combined with the Corel Web Server Control OCX, which implements a server API similar to the CGI, and its standalone console, the Corel Web Server.

See also