SocketTools Scripting Edition consists of Component Object Model (COM) libraries designed primarily for use in scripting languages such as VBScript, JavaScript and PHP. While the interface to the Scripting Edition components is similar to the ActiveX controls in the Visual Edition, the internal design has significant differences. The Scripting Edition components do not have the inherent overhead of ActiveX controls and they implement a threading model that makes them much more efficient to use with Active Server Pages (ASP) and similar environments. Unlike other software development toolkits which may use complicated data structures or require a complex interdependency between objects, the SocketTools interface is designed to be simple to understand and use. For example, there are no language specific constructs like C unions in our Library Edition API. By focusing on providing a clean interface that only requires intrinsic data types and simple structures, SocketTools can be used in a wide variety of programming languages beyond just C and C++. Likewise, our Visual and Scripting Edition components implement a straight-forward interface that is designed to be compatible with virtually any language that can use COM objects.
