New SocketTools 5.0 Features

If you're a developer who has used previous versions of SocketTools, or you're a new developer who needs to integrate Internet technology in your applications, SocketTools offers everything you need to get started. Here's an overview of what's new when you upgrade to SocketTools 5.0:

  1. SocketTools 5.0 is fully compatible with both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, and is designed to take advantage of new features introduced in Microsoft's latest operating system. Our developers use Vista and Visual Studio 2008 as their primary development platform, so we don't simply test under Vista, we work with the operating system every day and understand how it impacts application development in the real world. Of course, SocketTools is also fully supported under Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000. If your users are upgrading to Vista, then we recommend that you to upgrade to SocketTools 5.0 to ensure compatibility.
  2. Improved performance and reliability. A new internal memory management system improves how large blocks of memory are allocated and managed, both overall and on a per-client basis. In particular, complex multithreaded applications which create multiple client sessions can see increased performance and use fewer resources over the lifetime of the application.
  3. Enhanced security features. Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is a new encryption standard that is being widely adopted by the United States government and organizations around the world. SocketTools 5.0 supports AES on the Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 platforms, enabling your application to take advantage of the latest security features without requiring any changes to your applications.
  4. Support for multiple threading models on a per-session basis. Systems with more than one processor are becoming commonplace, and more developers are taking advantage of multithreaded designs in their own applications. SocketTools 5.0 supports a new "free threading" model which makes it even easier to write complex, multithreaded applications. It can significantly simplify your code and increase the overall performance of your multithreaded applications.
  5. Improved support for firewalls and proxy servers. New options for the File Transfer Protocol allows you to specify alternate port ranges for active mode transfers, making it simpler to integrate with software and hardware firewalls which limits access to certain ports. The Hypertext Transfer Protocol components have improved proxy support and automatic proxy detection which makes it easier to integrate your applications on a customer's network.
  6. Target multiple frameworks with the SocketTools .NET Edition. Assemblies for the 1.1, 2.0 and 3.5 .NET Frameworks are included in the same product, enabling developers to specifically target which framework they are using to deploy their application. Although most new development today is using Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008, we realize there are still a large number of developers who are creating applications using Visual Studio .NET 2003, and we will continue to provide support for the older versions of Visual Studio. Regardless of which version of .NET you're using, the SocketTools classes have identical interfaces and are completely source-compatible with one another.
  7. Better control over resource utilization. The SocketTools File Transfer and Hypertext Transfer components support session priority, giving your application finer control over the resources allocated for data transfers. Each client can have its own priority, which ranges from very low resource utilization for background operations that have minimal impact on the system, to critical transfers which allocate more memory, processor time and network bandwidth to the client session.
  8. Backwards compatibility with SocketTools 4.0. If you are currently using version 4.0 or 4.5, the components in version 5.0 are source-compatible and will require virtually no changes to your existing code. While new features have been added, the existing class interfaces and APIs remain the same. In most cases, all you will need to do is remove the old version of the control, class or library, replace it with the new version and recompile your application. Because the 5.0 components are designed to work side-by-side with previous versions, it also means that you can deploy new versions of your software without worrying about "DLL Hell" or other version incompatibilities.
  9. Expanded technical reference documentation. The reference material for SocketTools is extensive, and in version 5.0 we've worked to make it both easy to understand and comprehensive. Available as both HTML Help and in PDF format, the SocketTools documentation includes a Developer's Guide to get you up and running quickly, and a Technical Reference that provides extensive documentation for every API function, class method, property and event. As an example, the documentation for the SocketTools .NET classes is over 3,200 pages and the SocketTools API is over 2,000 pages.
  10. Expanded and updated example code, including examples for Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio .NET 2003. We've reorganized many of the examples included with SocketTools to make them easier to find, easier to understand and extend for your own use. In addition to new examples for the current version of Visual Studio, we've also retained and updated the examples for Visual Basic 6.0 and Visual C++ 6.0 because we realize that some developers continue to use the older development tools. Additional examples for third-party languages like PowerBASIC and RealBasic have also been included based on customer feedback.

For more information, please review the SocketTools FAQ in the support section of our website. We also encourage you to download a free evaluation copy of the SocketTools 5.0 Edition that interests you. The evaluation license is valid for a single development system for 30 days, it is completely functional and can be safely installed side-by-side with earlier versions of SocketTools.

If you're interested in placing an order, you can use our secure online order form. We offer electronic delivery as an option, so if you place your order during normal business hours, you can be building and redistributing your application the very same day.

If you have any further questions about SocketTools, please be sure to contact us. We'll do our very best to respond promptly and thoroughly. We also recommend you visit our technical support forums and register there, where you can ask questions and participate in discussions with Catalyst technical support staff and other SocketTools developers.

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