Catalyst Development

The official release for SocketTools 5.0 has been scheduled for Wednesday, February 21st and developers who have purchased version 4.5 since January 1st will get a free upgrade to the new version. This new version of SocketTools contains a lot of “under the hood” improvements to the core networking code, along with interface changes to make the components even easier to use.

Windows Vista
One of the significant changes in SocketTools 5.0 is support for the new Windows Vista platform. Vista contains a lot of changes to the base operating system, enhanced security and a completely new TCP/IP stack. Some of those “under the hood” changes include changes specifically to support Vista, as well as some new features. For example, AES encryption is supported on Vista for secure connections using SSL and TLS. However, it’s important to note that you won’t have a problem deploying your applications to earlier versions of Windows. You don’t need write any platform-specific code to use our components; we handle all of the differences internally, whether you’re running on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 or Windows Vista.

Free Threading Model
Another one of the key architectural changes in this version is a new threading model for the libraries and .NET classes which makes it much easier to build multithreaded applications. This new functionality can be enabled with a single option, or by setting the new ThreadModel property in the .NET components. With free threading, handle and object ownership is no longer restricted to the thread that created it, and you have complete control over how threads are used to manage the network session.

SocketTools .NET
SocketTools 5.0 will include assemblies targeted for both the .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0 frameworks. Most new development is being done with .NET 2.0, however we understand the importance of continued support for the .NET 1.1 framework. During installation you can specify which version of the framework you’re using, or you can install both. If you install both versions, then the .NET 1.1 assemblies will be used with Visual Studio .NET 2003, and the .NET 2.0 assemblies will be used with Visual Studio 2005. Both versions are identical in terms of their interfaces and functionality. While having only a single .NET version did make things a bit simpler, we felt that providing two separate builds of the assemblies was the most flexible approach.

Source Compatibility
For anyone who upgraded from earlier versions of SocketTools to version 4.0, one of the big changes was that the version 4.0 interfaces were not source compatible. It was something that we felt was important to do in order to lay the foundation for future versions of SocketTools, but it did make the upgrade process more difficult. Fortunately, you’ll find that upgrading to version 5.0 requires no changes to your existing code. You’re free to change your code to take advantage of the new features, but all you’ll need to do is reference the new components or libraries. However, it’s important to keep in mind that the new version is not binary compatible with previous versions. In other words, they aren’t drop-in replacements for the same components, so it does mean that you’ll need to recompile your application. The good news there is that it also means that the 5.0 libraries and controls can co-exist with any previous versions of SocketTools without a problem.

The release is just nine days away, and as the saying goes, the last 10% of a project is always 90% of the work. We’d like to thank those developers who’ve provided feedback and testing throughout the development of version 5.0, and we’re looking forward to getting this into everyone’s hands next week!