Developer oriented products updated

Lots of Mac products targeted mostly to developers are getting updates, according to MacTech magazine.

DataShell 1.4, a driver solution that allows FutureBASIC 3 developers to use Valentina XCMD, is now available from MacBrowse, a provider of applications and Internet solutions that specialize in database development for the Mac.

Sig Software has released MADE (Macintosh Application Development Essentials) 1.7.5, a small package of C/C++ code that provides all the lowest-level needs for a Mac application, for both the Classic and Carbon APIs (application programming interfaces), according to Sig’s Gideon Greenspan.

“MADE’s most valuable feature is its glue code which provides a unified wrapper for much of the Classic and Carbon APIs,” he said. “This allows developers to use a single source code base to build versions of their software that run natively on OS 7 through to OS X, with no CarbonLib required.”

MADE was developed in-house at Sig Software for use in their own programs, such as Analog Helper, Cross Platform, Drop Drawers, Email Effects and TableText. It includes several features to help the development process, such as assertions, memory trashing, allocation tracking and leak testing, according to Greenspan.

Version 1.7.5 is updated for full compatibility with the latest CodeWarrior 6 compiler and Carbon headers, adds more accessors and functions to the Classic/Carbon glue code, debug-friendly error reporting and more. Details can be found at the MADE page.

The first beta-test version of InterMapper for Mac OS X and the traditional classic Mac operating system is out. InterMapper 3.0 is a network monitoring and alerting program that watches over the network and the servers connected to it, and notifies the network manager when there are problems.

The major changes to InterMapper 3.5 include Mac OS X compatibility, custom SNMP probes to allow the testing of new devices, new probes (including Cisco and HTTPS), and various bug fixes. InterMapper is available online.

Schema Research has released SRTransport 5.0.4, which offers greater stability overall, according to Lowell Schneider. Plus, the user interface is improved with greater consistency and with a new “Interactive SQL” feature, and a new data-browsing feature, he added.

“The driving purpose behind SRTransport is to bring data manipulation capabilities into a user interface, to avoid programming against interfaces such as Oracle’s OCI, Sybase’s CTLIB or to XML and JDBC libraries, etc., yet still take advantage of the features available in those APIs,” Schneider said.

By offering multiple transport modes and data-editing expressions, what used to be programming tasks, now become SRTransport solutions that all data professionals (engineers and others) can create, he added.

SRTransport is being showcased running on Mac OS X at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in San Jose. It’s for sale at Schema Research and OpenBase International.

Mathemaesthetics has updated Resorcerer, resource and data file editing utility, to version 2.4. Resorcerer 2.4 will ship both Classic (System 8 and 9) and Carbonized (for Mac OS X) versions. This is the company’s first major upgrade of Resorcerer since version 2.2 was released near the end of 1999.

“Apple’s Mac OS X is an impressive step forward in the evolution of Macintosh, and Mac developers have been demanding and eagerly awaiting a native Mac OS X resource and data file editing tool,” said Doug McKenna, developer of Resorcerer and president of Mathemaesthetics. “Apple has wisely maintained and enhanced support for resources, whether classic resource-fork-based, or the newer data-fork-based format also available on Mac OS X.”

Resorcerer 2.4’s ability to edit data structures kept in either format, and to open and edit other types of data files as well, not only allows Mac developers to continue to rely on the benefits of collections of resources, but also makes it far easier to port, maintain, and enhance older Mac software on the new UNIX-based world of Mac OS X, he added.

Resorcerer 2.4 has a suggested retail price of $256, with quantity, reseller, educational, and student discounts available from Mathemaesthetics. New copies can be ordered directly from the Mathemaesthetics’ Web site.

Deep Sky Technologies has released their first beta of TCP Deux 1.0.0 for Mac and Windows, a 4th Dimension component that provides cross-platform TCP wrappers for different TCP plug-ins available for 4th Dimension. The plug-ins supported within TCP Deux include 4D Internet Commands v6.7.x, Internet ToolKit v2.0.x, and Internet ToolKit v2.5.x.

“With the TCP Deux component, a 4th Dimension developer can code TCP level routines without worrying about which particular plug-in is going to be used,” Steven Willis, president of Deep Sky Technologies said. “TCP Deux provides a very simple upgrade path for developers to write one set of code. With TCP Deux, a 4D developer can begin by using the free 4D Internet Commands for all TCP communications and upgrade to the commercial Internet ToolKit plug-in when the needs arises, all without changing a single line of code.”

The beta for TCP Deux is open to the public. The TCP Deux beta archive contains serialization for using the component through the end of June 2001. A full manual is included.

CommonGround Softworks has released Qilan 2.0 for Mac OS X. It’s an upgrade to their Web application development environment that purportedly improves the transaction handling performance and adds access to additional SQL databases using Java standards based technology.

Existing Qilan owners have reduced pricing available for this Qilan upgrade. The overall pricing has been reduced for Mac OS X along with the inclusion of database adapters that were separately available under Qilan 1.X. Qilan 2.0 currently supports the following databases: Frontbase, Helix Rade, MS SQL Server, Openbase, and Paradox.

Mac binaries for the recent 8.3.3 releases of the Tcl scripting language and the Tk toolkit are now available. This is the third patch release of Tcl/Tk 8.3. More details can be found, as well as an installer, online. Tcl (Tool Command Language) is an interpreted language and a portable interpreter for that language.