Catalyst Development

SocketTools 7, codenamed “Sawtooth”, is going to introduce some exciting new features, along with some additional components that expand the functionality of the product. We wanted to provide you with an overview of a few of the things you can expect to see in this upcoming release, as well as provide some general information about the new version. Continue Reading »

When people think of the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol, interactive terminal sessions and secure file transfers are typically what to come to mind. In addition to these common functions, SSH also supports securely executing a command on a remote host and returning the output of that command back to the local system. The SSH component that is included with the SocketTools Secure Editions enables you to take advantage of this functionality through a single method call named Execute. Continue Reading »

Microsoft announced that Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009 and will be generally available in October. This new version of Windows is essentially an incremental release that builds on the features introduced with Windows Vista, with a focus on increased hardware and software compatibility, improved performance and new, redesigned shell. The Engineering Windows 7 blog at Microsoft has some excellent information about this new version of Windows. Continue Reading »

Technical support for version 5.0 of all SocketTools Editions, all SocketWrench Editions, and the File Transfer and Internet Mail products will officially end on June 30, 2009. It is recommended that those developers who are currently using version 5.0 download the last available build. Links to download the product files can be found in Knowledge Base Article 100269. There will be no further updates or hotfixes published for this version of the product. Continue Reading »

SocketTools 6.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1) has been released and offers improved performance and broader SSH server compatibility, along with a number of corrections to various components and libraries. For developers who are currently using version 6.0, this new service pack includes all of the hotfixes and updates made since the original release and is a free download for all registered developers. The most significant change has been made to the SSH and SFTP functionality, addressing a number of issues that were found with third-party commercial SSH servers, as well as some general compatibility problems reported by developers. For more information, please review the release notes.

The SocketTools 6.0 .NET Edition introduced the new InternetServer class that was designed to simplify the implementation of a TCP/IP server application. With only a few lines of code, you can create the framework for a multi-threaded server that is completely event driven. You only need to create event handlers and then write your server code to respond to those network events. Continue Reading »

SocketTools 6.0 introduced some new functionality as part of the existing file transfer API and components that enables applications to verify that the contents of a file on the local system are the same as a file on the server. This can be used to either ensure that a file was uploaded correctly, or to check whether or not a file should be downloaded. For example, an application could check to see if the contents of a local file were the same as a remote file the user has requested to download, and if they match, the application knows it’s not necessary to download the file again. Continue Reading »

One of the new features in SocketTools 6.0 is the Message Store API which is designed to make it simple to store and manage email messages on the local system. For developers who use the POP3, IMAP4 and NNTP components to retrieve messages, the storage API enables those messages to be easily stored in a single file, rather than storing them individually in separate text files. The actual message store format is similar to the standard UNIX mbox format, and the API can actually be used to open mailboxes that were created on a UNIX or Linux system. Continue Reading »

We are pleased to announce that SocketTools 6.0 has been released. This new version includes several new components, including a new SSH component for secure interactive terminal sessions and remote command execution, integrated support for secure file transfers using SFTP and a new Internet Server component that allows you to build a customized, scalable, multi-threaded server with only a few lines of code. The SocketTools 6.0 components are source compatible with version 4.0 and 5.0 and support side-by-side deployment, simplifying the upgrade process so that you can spend your time improving your software, not rewriting it. Continue Reading »

SocketTools 6.0 will introduce a new component and API framework that is designed to simplify the process of creating TCP/IP server applications. In the Library Edition, this will be included as extension of the existing SocketWrench API, with additional functions designed to create an instance of the server and manage the client session. In the .NET Edition and Visual Edition, it will be included as a new component that has an interface that is very similar to the current SocketWrench component. Continue Reading »