General
What does Chili!Soft do?
Chili!Soft provides platform independent Active Server Pages (ASP), the industry’s mainstream Web application platform. To help you in the development of ASP applications, Chili!Soft provides a wide range of components. From the award-winning Chili!Reports which enables developers to create powerful reports from database or spreadsheet data, to technologies such as Chili!Beans through which developers can access Java classes in the ASP environment.
What is Chili!Soft ASP and what are its benefits?
Chili!Soft ASP is the first open, cross-platform Web application server based on the Active Server Pages architecture. It enables developers of all levels to easily create and deploy powerful, high-performance Web applications using one of the many available development tools. After choosing an ASP development tool, developers can combine HTML, advanced business logic found in component objects (COM, Java, Corba), database connectivity via ODBC, and server-side scripting (VBScript, JScript) to glue all the pieces together to create and run Web-based business applications using Chili!Soft ASP technology.
What is ASP?
Active Server Pages (ASP) is an elegant, fast way to build sophisticated Web applications. It is the most widely adopted and fastest growing open Web application platform. It enables organizations to combine server scripting with robust custom server components (COM, Java or Corba objects) to easily create dynamic content and powerful Web-based business applications across heterogeneous computing environments. ASP combines HTML and VBScript with a set of intrinsic COM objects that provide most of the dynamic functionality that is necessary for Web-based applications. Third party or custom COM components can be instantiated and used by the ASP scripts. Databases can be accessed through Chili!Soft’s Microsoft-compliant ADO component. Since ASP is written in scripted VBScript, there is no compilation, making for an easy environment to debug, modify, and update.
Who is the Chili!Soft customer?
- Medium to large corporations, government agencies, educational institutions and other organizations running or planning to run server-based Internet and Intranet applications on their own servers.
- Small corporations that wish to use an HTML/ASP editor (such as FrontPage) and ASP applications through their Service Provider
- Independent software vendors (ISVs) who want to Web-enable their packaged software solutions using Chili!Soft ASP.
- Service Providers (including ISPs, IPPs and Application Service Providers) interested in hosting FrontPage and ASP applications on Web servers running Windows NT/2000, Sun Solaris, IBM AIX or OS/390, Hewlett-Packard HP-UX, and/or Linux.
- Hardware and software vendors that wish to OEM our product into their offering.
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Why would IT be interested in Chili!Soft ASP?
Chili!Soft ASP is proven. It is an application of existing technologies in an elegant framework. It is simply a combination of mature, time-tested methods and technologies to produce a great development platform. Chili!Soft ASP allows IT directors to effectively and efficiently use developers of varying skills and expertise on a single Web development project (ie, VB developers can be assigned to ASP scripting while C++ or Java developers write business logic into compiled objects). Chili!Soft ASP is easy to write and debug, thus reducing time to market. And ASP applications can require little to no re-coding to be deployed across the enterprise in heterogeneous computing environments featuring different Web servers and different operating systems.
Why would developers be interested in using ASP?
- ODBC compliant databases. Chili!Soft ASP works with ODBC compliant databases. Developers can use Microsoft Access on the desktop to develop or prototype the web application, then use the upsize tool from Microsoft to move the data from Access to SQL Server or to other databases. When you choose to migrate to another database, your investment in ASP is not lost.
- Rapid Application Development (RAD) tools
. Microsoft Visual Studio and FrontPage 2000, Macromedia Drumbeat, NetObjects Fusion and ScriptBuilder are among the most sophisticated tools that enable the development of web applications through the use of ASP, COM, and Java. Chili!Soft ASP can be considered the "glue" that pulls together components developed in programming languages optimized for the task at hand.
- Web IT applications. In-house departmental applications can get a new lease of life by using Chili!Soft ASP to develop Web interfaces to these applications. ChiliSoft ASP is also primed for multi-tier applications with dedicated servers optimized to run different sections of an application such as user authentication, business logic, database access and validation. Since Chili!Soft ASP runs on the server, browser independent Web applications can be easily developed.
- Developer control
. Chili!Soft ASP can always be extended using either of-the-shelf components or developed easily using your choice of programming language (C, C++ or Java) to extend the capabilities of your Web application. Chili!Soft ASP offers the flexibility and power to customize your company or department's process without succumbing to vendor lock-in.
- Meet your project deadlines
. Our experience is that ASP has enabled us to deliver database driven Web sites in as much as one-third of the time it used to take us. In addition to quick turn-around time, the web applications are flexible and modifications are easy to make.
- Great Objects
. Chili!Soft ASP comes bundled with two extremely powerful objects. With the Application Object you can develop web applications that actually share memory between users. The Session object presents an opportunity to individualize content to each and every user of the web application. There are over ½ dozen other objects included with the standard ASP offering. There are also over 1,000 commercial available objects that you can use to build applications quickly. Top Table of contents
Why would Corporations want to develop/deploy ASP on UNIX/Linux?
The question should be, why wouldn’t they want to use Chili!Soft ASP if they are serious about fast, effective Web application development and deployment. As a technology, we believe Chili!Soft ASP’s merits stand on their own.
- Chili!Soft ASP is platform independent, Web server independent, and database independent allowing corporations the utmost flexibility in deployment choices.
- Chili!Soft ASP allows developers and organizations to choose a wide variety of popular development tools with which to build an application.
- Chili!Soft ASP’s built-in objects make it easy to build sophisticated, dynamic Web applications.
- Chili!Soft ASP simplifies the interaction between the browser, application and data source, making it easy to access legacy data sources.
- Chili!Soft ASP is browser independent.
- Chili!Soft ASP is easy to learn and use. A shorter learning curve means faster time to market.
Why would Service Providers (ISPs, IPPs) want to develop/deploy with Chili!Soft ASP on UNIX/Linux?
Most Service Providers are very concerned with their service’s up-time and thus require an environment with Web servers running on UNIX or Linux operating systems. The problem that arises is that there is no easy way to implement dynamic scripting in these environments without substantial programming experience.
With Chili!Soft ASP not only can the Service Provider provide an easy to use dynamic scripting environment with database connectivity, but it also gains the ability to fully support Microsoft’s FrontPage extensions. FrontPage support opens up a customer base of approximately 10 million users to any Service Providers implementing Chili!Soft ASP. Most small businesses can’t afford to have custom scripting developed for their site, thus their only option is to have an employee, or in many cases the owner, develop the site using the tools and technologies that provide easy, wizard-based RAD (Rapid Application Development) tools. Besides FrontPage, NetObjects Fusion and Macromedia Drumbeat provide such development environments that utilize server-side ASP scripts to execute dynamic content and database connectivity. Top Table of contents
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