Catalyst Development

One of the most frequent questions that we get from developers evaluating our software is “Which edition of SocketTools should I buy?” It used to be that the answer was fairly straight-forward. The Visual Edition was for programmers who were using languages like Visual Basic, PowerBuilder or FoxPro. The Library Edition was primarily for C/C++ programmers, or those who simply preferred to use DLLs rather than ActiveX controls. Today, things are a bit more complex than that because development suites like Visual Studio and Borland Developer Studio provide multiple languages and target different platforms. SocketTools itself has also grown, adding scripting components for web developers and .NET assemblies which support multiple versions of the .NET Framework.

To make things easier for new customers to decide which edition of SocketTools best meets their needs, we’ve created a Product Wizard that will ask you a few questions and based on that information, recommend the most appropriate product. For example, if you specify that you’re programming in Visual C# on Windows XP and your program is an e-commerce application that needs to submit data to a website, as well as upload and download files then the Product Wizard will recommend the SocketTools Secure .NET Edition. Links are provided for more information about that edition, along with links to specific sections of the online technical reference that are related to the components you’ll be using. The idea was to put specific information about a relevant product all in one place, eliminating the need to search and guess which product would be the best choice. We hope that you find it to be useful, and we welcome any feedback you might have.