RIA Integration for .NET and Java Using WebORB Community Edition

Coders seeking to connect their clients built in Flex, Flash, Ajax and Silverlight to .NET, Java, PHP and Rails often have questions about WebORB Community Edition, such as: What is it? Where can I find it? How does it stack up against Enterprise Edition? What are the limitations? How is it licensed? This post will hopefully answer these questions and make it easier for coders to find Community Edition.

What is Community Edition?

Community Edition is a free version of WebORB for .NET and WebORB for Java (WebORB for PHP and WebORB for Rails are free open-source products) that allows you to not only connect your clients built in Flex, Flash, AJAX and Silverlight to either .NET or Java backends, but it also supports most of the functionality you find in Enterprise Edition, such as streaming media, data management, real-time messaging and developer productivity tools.


What are the Limitations with Community Edition?

Community Edition does not support clustering or running in an environment where there are multiple licensed WebORB products. (You'd want Enterprise Edition for those use cases.) Also, if you have a .NET environment, IIS is required to run Community Edition.

Is Community Edition the product I download from your website?

Yes and no. The product you download from our website is the Enterprise Edition running in "development mode". Development mode is FREE, but limits IP connections to the WebORB server to 5 IP addresses and requires IIS if it is WebORB for .NET. When you activate your Community Edition license key through the licensing tab in the WebORB console, the activation process configures WebORB to run as Community Edition, removing the 5 IP address limitation, but restricting deployment to one server.

How is Community Edition licensed?

We allow one free Community Edition license per company, which is appropriate for running a single instance of WebORB for .NET or WebORB for Java on one server running up to 8 processor cores with unlimited IP connections.

Where can I find Community Edition?

You can apply for a free Community Edition license here: http://tinyurl.com/yk7xoy6 All we ask is that you help us a little bit with spreading the word about WebORB, which is why we ask for some publishable information from you.

Was this post helpful? Please post any additional questions you might have regarding Community Edition to this blog.

WebORB Updates & New Release

We just announced in our Midnight Coders Monthly Newsletter that we will be releasing Version 4 of WebORB for .NET and WebORB for Java at the end of the month. These will be beta releases and will include many new productivity features that will help developers code faster, easier and reduce overall project cost (bosses and customers will be happy about that).

The following is what is new in version 4.0 for WebORB for .NET and WebORB for Java.

• integration with Data Modeler in Flash Builder v.4
• pluggable user-defined code generators
• updated code generator for Cairngorm and PureMVC
• new code generators for Mate and Swiz frameworks
• all code generators support auto-creation of Flex Builder project files
• support for .NET RIA Services (experimental feature) (WebORB for .NET only)
• pluggable user-defined service browsers for the Management Console
• service browser for XML/SOAP web services
• service browser for WCF services
• support for AMF behavior for WCF services
• support for client/server property renaming via .NET attributes and Java annotations
• improved code generation to support multiple namespaces and class hierarchies
• support for IExternalizable (WebORB for Java only)

Version 4 Beta will be available end of month. Customers that have purchased WebORB Enterprise Edition will need to contact their account manager to receive a new license key for version 4. (Must have an active support plan.)

New WEBINAR SERIES for July and August

We've got all new topics for July and August, so be sure to check out our Midnight Coders Monthly Newsletter (will be out later this week) for information on this series and more including new Tips and Tricks for connecting AIR clients with .NET services.

July Webinar Schedule

July 13th - 3pm(CST)
Real-Time Messaging and Streaming with Flex and .NET
To Register: http://bit.ly/3kyYC

July 20th - 3pm (CST)
Introduction to Stress Testing of Flex Applications
To Register: http://bit.ly/zVmjm

July 27th - 3pm (CST)
Integrating AIR and .NET
To Register: http://bit.ly/t4cs0


August Webinar Schedule

August 3rd - 3pm (CST)
Publish/Subscribe with Flex and Java
To Register: http://bit.ly/4c0mrc