What's new in IP*Works! ActiveX COM V8.0?

The IP*Works! V8 components represent a substantial leap forward in design, performance, and new functionality. Enterprise features like IPv6 addressing and support for 64-bit architectures have been enabled to make your connectivity application compatible with current and future technologies. In addition, the new highly-evolved Version 8.0 core has been extended, updated, and optimized for each inpidual supported development technology.

IP*Works! ActiveX COM new major features

Streams are a powerful addition to the new IP*Works! V8 release. Native input and output streams have been added to those IP*Works!components that would benefit from them. As a developer this gives you unprecedented flexibility and ease of use when integrating Internet communications features into your applications. In addition, collections have been enabled across the entire suite of Version 8.0 components. Collections can be used to populate the IP*Works! components before calling methods, or more commonly, will be populated with results after calling a method or performing some action. While in many situations collections provide an easier way to access component features, the IP*Works! event model has been maintained and is still an integral part of the overall product architecture enabling better responsiveness and fine grained control when required.

IP*Works! ActiveX COM new components & updates to existing components - Below is a short list of some of the new and exciting inpidual component updates available in the IP*Works! V8.

• ATOM - New ATOM client component supporting ATOM feed retrieval and publishing.
• REST - New component implements a standard REST client, facilitating access to REST style web services such as those from Amazon and eBay.
• DNS - Naming Authority Pointer (NAPTR) support and support for Reverse DNS lookups.
• FTP/TFTP - Upload/Download Files to/from memory without writing to disk. FTP clear data channel support (PROT C)
• HTTP/WebUpload - Upload/Download Files to/from memory without writing to disk.
• IPPort/IPDaemon - Facilitated file and data transfer through easy to use methods like 'SendFile' etc.
• LDAP - Support for search result references. Easily move and copy DN's. Support for LDAP referrals.
• Mime - Parse mime headers without decoding entire mime entities.
• NetClock - Support for Simple Network Time Protocol providing greater time precision.
• Ping - Send custom ping packet and change max datagram size.
• RSS - RSS 2.0 extensions and OPML support. HTTP cookie handling and automatic HTTP redirect following. Load RSS from memory. Support for in memory RSS XML manipulation. If-modified-since handling.
• SMPP - SMPP receive capabilities enable the component to poll SMPP servers for messages.
• XMPP - Support for Jabber extensions, additional contact parameters, and SASL authentication.
• XMLp - Expanded Xpath navigation and support for easily retrieving xml sub-trees.
• HTTP Based Components - HTTP Compression & NTLM Authentication Support.

New Components in V6.0

• DNS - Full featured DNS component supporting every major DNS record format, including: AAAA (IPv6), Mailbox (MB), Mailbox Rename (MR), Name Server (NS), Text (TXT), Service (SRV), and many more
• RSS - Really Simple Syndication (RSS) component. Used for creating, retrieving, and editing RSS feeds. Supports RSS 0.91, 0.92, and 2.0
• IPMonitor - Network Monitor packet capturing and protocol analysis component. Easy to use event based interface for monitoring local networks. (supports Windows 2000 and later Operating Systems)
• SMPP - Short Message Peer-to-Peer client component. Used to send SMS cellular text messages
• SNMPAgent - SNMP Agent component with support for SNMP V3 and secure network management
• SNMPMgr - SNMP Manager component for querying SNMP capable devices. SNMP V3 support
• Syslog - Client and Server component capable of sending or receiving system log messages
• WebDav - WebDAV Client component for distributed web authoring, versioning, and collaboration
• XMPP - Lightweight Jabber Client for communicating with XML based Jabber Servers

New Features For Existing Components

• IPInfo - Query interface info, similar to the windows IPCONFIG command. Retrieve network adapter information such as Mac addresses, Default Gateway, Default DNS Server, DHCP Server, Host information etc., as well as the ability to Release and/or Renew network interface bindings
• Email sending components (SMTP, HTMLMailer, FileMailer, etc.) create spam-filter friendly emails, support digest authentication, message queuing, and more
• SNMP V3 Support- The SNMP component has been split into SNMPAgent and SNMPMgr components and now has SNMP V3 support
• FTP - Firewall friendly port management for active FTP connections, configurable performance optimization properties, etc. HTMLMailer & FileMailer - Send HTML emails with file attachments, SMTP authorization, and increased throughput for bulk mailings
• HTTP - More complete HTTP 1.1 support including methods for chunking, range, and persistent connections
• IMAP - CRAM MD5 authentication, built in attachment decoding, and server side message sorting
• ACL extensions for IMAP account management and user permissions modification
• Ping - Send multiple asynchronous Ping requests, WakeOnLan support for turning on WOL capable machines and devices remotely
• NetCode - New encoding and hashing formats : Y-encoding, SHA, MD5, etc
• LDAP - Ldap v3 paging support, server side sorting of search results, synchronous or asynchronous operation
• POP - Digest authentication and additional component interface enhancements
• IPDaemon - Increased incoming connection limit and new functionality that simplifies the building of robust server applications
• A new config method in every component encapsulates cross-component features or infrequently used functionality, greatly simplifying component interfaces across the board
• New timeout features - timeout due to transfer inactivity or total method execution time

What's new in V5.0?

In addition to the existing 22 IP*Works! components such as HTTP, FTP, NNTP, SMTP, POP, IMAP, Telnet, SNMP, LDAP, Multicast, etc. the new version includes the following new components, bringing the total number to 35 components:

• SOAP - generic SOAP client supporting SOAP 1.1. Built on top of the new IP*Works! XML parser (see below)
• XMLp - SAX2 compliant XML parser with support for XPath DOM traversal and XML structure validation. Optimized for read applications, with a super-fast engine that builds internal DOM structures with close to zero heap allocations. An additional "relaxed" mode allows for parsing of "traditional" HTML (non-XML) documents
• WebForm - the easy way to post HTML form data to HTTP servers, with full support for Cookie-based sessions and redirection
• WebUpload - upload files to web servers with support for standard HTTP/MIME uploading (the ASP edition of the component, allows you to easily retrieve files on the server side - as would any other standard server upload component)
• Ping and TraceRoute: two new components built on top of the ICMPPort component, with an extensive feature list (see the help file for details)
• T FTP client component (available across all editions)
• NetClock component to get/set time from network time servers
• RCP for copying files to/from UNIX systems
• Whois - complete Whois component, with support for distributed WHOIS servers that allows the component to automatically find the registrar for a particular domain
• FileMailer - built on top of SMTP and MIME: easy way to send messages with file attachments
• HTMLMailer - allows you to send HTML mail messages, including embedded images

The existing IP*Works! components have been upgraded with new features and capabilities such as support for SOCKS4/5 firewalls and tunneling proxies accross the board, Quality Of Service (QOS) control options (a must for real-time communications), redesigned help files, expanded sample applications, etc.

The new Version 4.0 contains six new controls bringing the total to 22 components: FTP, HTTP, ICMPPort, IMAP, IPDaemon, IPInfo, IPPort, LDAP, Multicast, MIME, MX, NNTP, NetCode, NetDial, POP, Rexec, Rshell, SMTP, SNMP, SNPP, Telnet, UDPPort. They are provided as ActiveX controls, Visual C++ Classes, Native C++ Builder VCLs, C Libraries, and even 16 bit Visual Basic eXtensions (VBX) for legacy platforms.

IP*Works! ActiveX edition contains 32 bit ActiveX Components optimized for the Internet. Add email, network management, file transfer, telnet, and HTTP, and more to applications. These components are small, with no dependencies on external libraries. They can be used from Visual Basic, and all other environments that support ActiveX Controls (MS Access, FoxPro, etc.).

Here is a little about each control:

• FTP - Transfer files to and from FTP servers. Very easy to use with a 'plug and play', extensible interface
• IPPort - Generic TCP client control. Easy, powerful, asynchronous interface to Winsock stream sockets
• IPDaemon - The easiest way to build TCP/IP server applications. Asynchronous, event driven interface
• UDPPort - Easy interface to UDP packet communications. Can be used to build both clients and servers
• Mcast - Internet Multicast control. Similar to UDPPort, but with further reaching capabilities
• ICMPPort - Access to the IP control layer. Build network control applications such as 'ping', or 'traceroute'
• IMAP - Implementation of a generic IMAP4 client, used, to access corporate mail servers
• SMTP - Used to send Internet Mail. Standards based and extensible, with support for protocol extensions
• POP - Internet Post Office control. Used to retrieve Internet Mail. Easy, intuitive interface
• LDAP - Search, manage, and maintain Internet Directory (LDAP) servers, the new trend in directories
• NNTP - USENET news control. Used to read, search, and post articles in Internet News Groups (USENET)
• SNPP - Send messages to alphanumeric pagers through standard Internet Paging gateways
• SNMP - The easy way to create custom Network Management applications based on SNMP standards
• IPInfo - A collection of DNS and other database functions. Used to resolve direct and reverse DNS queries
• MX - Directly search Internet Domain Servers for email servers accepting email for the specified address
• NetDial - Allow access to Windows RAS API for management of Internet and RAS dialup connections
• HTTP - Access the World Wide Web from your applications. Automate web solutions with ease
• Rexec - Allows execution of commands remotely on a UNIX machine using the rexec protocol
• Rshell - Allows execution of commands remotely on a UNIX machine using the remote shell mechanism
• Telnet - A programmer's interface to building a Telnet client. Facilitates handling of Telnet commands
• NetCode - UUencode, Base64, Quoted Printable, and URL encoding and decoding used to transfer binary data
• MIME - Easy encoding and decoding of MIME structures. Special support for Internet Mail messages