SocketTools Overview
SocketTools is a collection of components designed to help developers create Internet-enabled applications quickly and easily, without sacrificing flexibility or performance. Because SocketTools includes a large number of components and has several editions, we thought it would be helpful to provide an overview of the SocketTools family of products. This will give you a better general understanding of what SocketTools is, and which product will best suit your needs. We recommend using our Product Wizard, which will help you select the best SocketTools Edition for your project, based on your development needs.
There are three SocketTools editions, each designed to meet the needs of specific types of development projects:
SocketTools .NET Edition
The SocketTools .NET Edition consists of managed code classes for use with
the .NET Framework. These classes are compatible with Visual Studio 2010,
Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio .NET 2003 on Windows 2000 and later platforms. The
class interfaces are very similar to the ActiveX control interfaces in the
ActiveX Edition, making it easy to migrate legacy applications that used the
SocketTools controls to the .NET platform. It is important to note that the
.NET Edition classes are managed code components written in C# and are not
compatible with older development tools such as Visual Basic 6.0.
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SocketTools ActiveX Edition
The SocketTools ActiveX Edition consists of ActiveX controls which
are designed to be used with Visual Basic, Visual FoxPro,
PowerBuilder and other Rapid Application Development programming
languages. The ActiveX Edition components can also be used with
Visual Studio .NET, Visual C++ or any other language that supports
the use of ActiveX controls.
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SocketTools Library Edition
The SocketTools Library Edition consists of standard dynamic link libraries
(DLLs) and can be used in a wide variety of programming languages. Because most
programming languages support calling functions exported from a DLL, the Library
Edition provides the broadest compatibility with the various development tools
available for the Windows platform. The Library Edition is ideal for languages
such as Visual C++ and C++ Builder as well as a number of other languages such
as Delphi and PowerBASIC.
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Each SocketTools Edition includes both 32-bit and 64-bit components, supports the IPv6 Internet protocol and includes support for secure connections using the standard Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Shell (SSH) protocols. SocketTools can be used to connect to secure web, file and mail servers around the world, ensuring your application provides all of the security features that your users require.
For a comparison of the various SocketTools Editions and their features, please review the SocketTools Features spreadsheet.