Press Release
For Immediate Publication
Paia, Hawaii, USA


http://www.west-wind.com/webconnection/

West Wind Technologies proudly announces the release of West Wind Web Connection 3.0, the Enterprise Web Development tool for Microsoft Visual Studio and Visual FoxPro database developers.

Web Connection is a complete Web application framework for developing and delivering scalable e-business solutions. It is a proven development platform for integrating browser, thin client and fat client Web and distributed applications.

New user-friendly features make it possible for first time Web developers to build Enterprise applications. The new Web Connection Management Console handles project setup and server configuration through easy to use Wizards. The easy-to-navigate online Help system provides clearly written topics and examples that illustrate all aspects of Web Connection's development environment including detailed Getting Started and Step by Step guides and a full class reference of object oriented the Web Connection framework accessible to the developer.

To quick start new users, a demo application combines samples that illustrate many of the basic features including a guest book, an order entry system, rotating ad banners, an automated e-mail routine, and a distributed client/server system built around XML messaging. These Enterprise technologies highlight querying and updating data in Cursor, ADO recordset or XML format to communicate with a remote Web Connection server.

The well-established Message Board system that is included as a sample application is ideally suited for customer service and support sites. It demonstrates an HTTP client/server, Web-driven distributed application that can be tailored into a full-blown customer relationship management (CRM) system.

Innovative scalability and management features let Web Connection take on large scale Web applications that take millions of dynamic page hits a day. Some of these state-of-the-art features include its own server pool manager, crash recovery, server monitoring, logging and live online code updates that make for a very reliable platform to build mission critical Web applications on.

Time-saving enhancements accelerate the development cycle of creating dynamic output whether it's common denominator HTML, advanced DHTML rendered from Visual Studio's FoxPro forms, Adobe PDF reports or customized XML from the built-in XML services. XML support is provided on several levels for client and server operation and easy conversions of data and objects to and from XML in a flexible messaging architecture.

A full arsenal of client side tools are provided including a full featured HTTP library that includes special support for XML services. In addition client support for FTP and SMTP email is also provided for use in client and server side applications.

Web Connection's object oriented architecture is open and comes with fully commented source code to learn from and extend the functionality of the base framework. The object oriented nature of the framework make it possible to cleanly add new behaviors without touching original code.


About West Wind Technologies
West Wind Technologies, founded in 1995 and based in Paia, Hawaii, develops, markets and supports application development and server software for a wide range of Web development projects. The company's primary products, Web Connection, Visual Web Builder and Web Monitor, enable professional developers to build high-volume, transaction-oriented Web sites for electronic commerce, business information systems, content publishing and multi-user collaboration. West Wind Technologies can be reached by phone at: (808) 579-8342, fax: (808) 579-8547, by e-mail at rstrahl@west-wind.com, or via the Web at http://www.west-wind.com.

Web Connection 3.0 is now available directly from West-Wind Technologies ( http://www.west-wind.com) for US$ 399.00. A free evaluation version is available for download from our Web site.

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Additional info

For new users there are lots of features that
make getting started easier. The new Web Connection
Management Console helps set up Web projects and
helps with Server Configuration for moving applications
online from a development environment. The Wizards
create ready to run projects to which developers
only add their custom class methods to handle requests.

Knowledgeable users will also appreciate the Server
Configuration Wizard which simplifies server configuration
and installation by copying the appropriate install files
and setting up the Web server with virtuals, script maps
and COM registrations for your applications.

Web Connection's COM capabilities are much more transparent
in this version. All Web Connection servers are automatically
COM enabled and can run either as a standalone, *debuggable* VFP
application or as COM object using Web Connection's high performance
pool manager. The pool manager is very efficient with performance
gains of at least 100% over Active Server Pages running equivalent
(VFP or VB) COM objects!

Speaking of ASP if you really want to slow down your apps you can
do that now too <s> - Web Connection applications can run as native
ASP components when compiled as MTDLLs. You can still develop and
debug your applications interactively in VFP using the Web Connection
server, and then compile to a DLL for ASP deployment.

The new Help file also expands drastically on previous
documentation with detailed descriptions of the entire
architecture and framework. There are also several
step by step guides that take you full circle through
installation, running the demo, your first project and
deploying your application online.

While developing applications Web Connection includes
tons of powerful features to generate HTML from your
data and data structures. Simple objects can render
cursors and records with a couple of lines of code,
and you can even provide simple browse and edit
applications with only a handful of lines of code.
These aren't code generators but extensible objects
that can be custumized and reused easily.

Powerful high level features also let you render live
running Visual FoxPro forms as Dynamic HTML. Supports
all of VFP's built in user interface controls (except
ActiveX control) including page frames and even read
only grids. Run your reports to Adobe Acrobat
to create browser readable output with the PDF ActiveX
control.

New Enterprise features include strong support for XML
services in distributed applications. The XML services
bring remote SQL access to FoxPro and SQL datasources.
Queries can be made using XML input formats with results
returned via VFP Cursors, ADO recordsets or XML. XML
clients can be browser only solutions. The same mechanism
is applied towards making remote COM method calls with
XML input and outputs.

The XML services are available as a VFP Class front end
or to raw XML clients which include browser only clients
such as Internet Explorer 5.0. Any XML client that can
access HTTP data directly and POST data to the server
can participate.

In addition, Web Connection's Server Management features
are unrivaled: Automatic crash recovery of any hung or
timed out servers, live code updates without shutting
the Web server down, online configuration management,
automated logging and statistics - all built-in.

Web Connection also provides strong HTTP client support
for using VFP as the client in Web driven distributed
applications. Access any Web content with all of HTTP's
features including security and encryption, HTTP headers,
proxy support, several POST modes, Async operation - all with
VFP code you can check out - no black box code here.

The above XML Server features are integrated into VFP client
HTTP classes that wrap the XML interfaces to provide remote
data and COM access for your apps. Additional features provide
binary file transfers over HTTP with explicit support for DBF
files - perfect for VFP client apps that can do without the
overhead of XML conversions. wwHTTPData is flexible enough to
return data in XML, VFP Cursor or ADO Recordset format.

Speaking of XML conversions, Web Connection provides all the tools
to convert VFP data, VFP objects, ADO recordsets to and from XML
in an easy to use wwXML class. Object support includes support for
hierarchical object storage to persist complex objects easily over
the wire.

For Enterprise level applications there are new objects for async
Web requests using MS Message QUeue with a class that can be used
generically to queue and execute COM objects asynchronously. The
QueueCOMServer persists COM requests and executes them when retrieved
with results going back in the queue. These features will be available
natively in Win2000 but they're not nearly as flexible as what you
can do natively with VFP and XML here. This architecture is fully open...

The Web Connection documentation is now fully available in fully
searchabled index HTML Help format. Over 2 megs worth of documentation
and reference with lots of examples, Getting Started and Step by Step
guides to make it easy to get going.