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ALP Engine Core Downloads

Download ALP run-time files
Download this package if you want to run ALP based applications and you are not going to develop software based on ALP. Contains only the vital parts of ALP engine without documentation, samples and development tools. Size ~700KB self extract installation package - download and run.

Download ALP Full package
Download this package if you want not only run ALP based applications but also develop, port, adapt applications to run under ALP. Conatains documentation, samples, tools for software developers. Size 3.3MB self extract installation package - download and run. If you prefer a ZIP archive instead of self-extract, download ALP.ZIP (4.8MB).

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Active Local Pages 1.5 beta

ALP 1.5 combines the latest additions to ALP engine and its run-time library (A rich set of COM classes you can use). While ALP itself has some minor features added most new features are in the run-time library. There is a list of the major modules included with ALP 1.5:

ActiveX Pack1 (core) new version. With some new components and added features to many existing ones.
NetStreams. Minor updates.
HashCryptStreams. New module with cryptography components working in combination with ActiveX Pack1
SQLite COM. No changes
SQLite3 COM. Powerful embedded database engine designed to fit naturally in ASP/ALP applications.
WebImage. Image processing and manipulation components (one server side and one client side with scanner support).
HTMLParser light. HTML and limited XML parser using the VarDictionary from ActiveX Pack1 to hold the document model in the memory.

You may know some of the new modules already if you are using ActiveX Pack1 with which some of them were already published. Anyway, some new features were added recently and you may find useful the short comments about them later in this page.

Download ALP 1.5 beta
For those who want to use it immediately here is a list of what you can download:
ALP 1.5 with latest documentation for installation on development machine (ZIP). This contains everything you need to develop with ALP. Note that the documentation is not yet up-to date, some new features are not described. If you want to download this as self-installing executable use this link (SFX installation)
Portable (autorun) application container. This is pre-configured empty portable application. You can place your application in the APP directory and run it by starting the alpframe.exe (in the root directory) without the need to install ALP or the application. The demo below are using this package - you can download them and peek inside.
DEMO
A CV database with the new ASP-CTL framework. This demo can be used to test yourself the ALP portability. You can unpack it on a flash memory stick and run it anywhere.
SQLite3 database manager
A portable SQLite3 database manager packed with the same portable container mentioned above. You can unpack it anywhere and start using it without installation (just run alpframe.exe). Like the demo it can be put on a flash memory stick or memory card and used from there. The manager is included in the ALP development package, so you do not need to download it separately if you plan to install the development package. Of course, having a portable database manager on a flash stick is useful for client support tasks - it is always at hand.

A few words about the new additions

This section will be appended frequently the following month until the official version is released. If you cannot find what you need here feel free to e-mail us.

Before reading further, keep in mind that all those components are built with IIS and ALP in mind. They are optimized for IIS/PWS servers and can be used for non-ALP based ASP development. Therefore most comments below are not ALP specific and some are applicable only for server usage (such as performance capabilities).

SQLite3 COM. SQLite3 is mature database engine supporting SQL features one would not expect from an embedded database. It has evolved in a bit different direction than the database servers, our derivate has gone even furhter. The first things first, SQLite3 COM supports query parameters in various manners, for instance you can write:
Set results = db.VExecute("SELECT * FROM T WHERE FIELDA=$a AND FIELDB=$b",1,0,FieldAParam, FieldBParam)
Or you can use collections and pass them directly as parameter sets like this:
Set coll = Server.CreateObject("newObjects.utilctls.VarDictionary")
coll("a") = "Peter"
coll("b") = 30
Set results = db.CExecute("SELECT * FROM T WHERE FIELDA=$a AND FIELDB=$b", coll)
The real trick is to use session parameters. You can set some parameters for the duration of the session:
db.Parameters("USERID") = Session("CURRENT_USER_ID") ' Assume you have recorded it in the session during the login.
And then use them in queries, views and triggers. For instance you can create view that takes into account the current user and returns relevant results. The effect is that the application code becomes simpler (it works with the view and does not need to take care about passing boring parameters like the current user). For example:
CREATE VIEW VITEMS AS SELECT * FROM ITEMS WHERE OWNER_ID=Parameter('USERID')
If you want to cry "this is nice!" you probably also would ask why is this possible with SQLite and not possible with database servers? SQLite works in the thread of your ASP page, by opening a session (db.Open) you create a new database engine's instance dedicated to your particular request - it is yours and you can do with it whatever you want. On the contrary the database servers are used through connectors (in ASP this would be ADO/OLEDB) which consume precious resources - network connections, cache and to mitigate the problem they maintain a connections pool where the same database session is reused sometimes even by different users let alone different pages (depending on the application). There is no way to create a session parameters feature in such a scenarios without added costs measured in additional network transfer, complicated session synchronization and so on which will render the feature useless. SQLite has advantage here - it needs negligible time to init a new instance of the entire database engine (times less than the time needed to establish connection to a database server) which makes it viable to make on-the-fly session configurations that would simplify the application/database interoperation. In fact working with SQLite3 database is as fast as accessing a local file - the rest is up to you: create good database schema, plan good indices, create views and triggers that will make your work easier and the code simpler in the end this will gain you more performance than any complicated database access architecture would. Is there a downside to this? Yes everything has its price - this technique is for embedded databases which means you cannot scale the application to several servers. So, the verdict is you can gain more from a single server this way, but you sacrifice the scalability. For ALP, of course, this is not an issue - it works not only on one machine, but for a single user, but if you are building application for the WEB make your estimations first - if you plan to go for more than a few hundred thousands hits per day with a complicated database you should look beyond SQLite. If not, you will save yourself a lot of work and a lot of resources on the server (the memory consumption is many times lower than in ASP.NET/MSSQL for example) and the server will be able to serve much more visitors than it could if a heavier database and WEB technology is used. To bring some order lets define what an average database schema is: Something with 30-100 tables where single page performs about 20-30 queries where about 10 of them join 3-4 tables (usually outer joins) and 2-3 conditions in the WHERE clause. From these most are read (select) queries and only 2-3 per average page are assumed to be write queries (insert/update). Some simple optimization techniques can easily enable such an ASP/SQLite3 application to serve up to 2 million requests per day on a minimal server with under 2GHz single core processor. Read more on the SQLite3 COM WEB page

WebImage. Everybody needs something for image processing from time to time. This component offers the ASP pages means to change image sizes, apply a number of simple effects/adjustments, convert from/to different image formats (jpeg, gif, png, bitmap and so on). The component comes in two flavors - server side (for usage in ASP pages) and client side (for usage with client side javascript). While the second version requires it to be installed on the client's machine it offers some interesting advantages - such as scanner support (through WIA which is the Windows standard today for scanner access. TWAIN is not supported because the drivers or often unstable and this is not suitable for an ActiveX working in the browser). While using the client version in public applications may be unwise, because of the many different browsers today it is a good choice for intranet applications. In public applications one usually prefers the server side - where the server version comes in handy.

HashCryptStreams.  Symmetric/asymmetric cryptography and hashing algorithms bundled together in a form naturally fitting the abstract stream features found in ActiveX Pack1. They can be used both directly (to hash/crypt/decrypt blocks of data) or over streams allowing the encryption/hashing to occur as part of file read/write operation, network transfer and so on. If you are unfamiliar with ActiveX Pack1 streams (SFStream for instance) and their use with files and network connections you may find a shortcut in using the cryptography components over data you fed into their methods as simple parameter, but the streams may save a lot of work if you plan to create library routines/classes.

ActiveX Pack1 core. (Its WEB page is here). This is the core for many components and contains over 30 classes covering features like file access, abstract streams, binary/text/record based work with streams and consequently files, universal collections like VarDictionary (capable of behaving as list, stack, queue, dictionary), script manipulators allowing you to load and run VBScript/Javascript code directly or asynchronously in a separate thread, string formatting utilities and many more. Most other modules use ActiveX Pack1 core to some extent which allows you to base your knowledge about ALP and its run-time library on common base of a few central classes and read about the rest only when needed. 

 

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