Questions: Questions to ask when comparing web solutions

WebHub includes runners for ISAPI, cgi-bin, and cgi-win so that you do not have to develop that interface yourself. Furthermore the architecture builds in an easy-to-use mechanism for tracking the surfer via the URL, and saving his/her data on a TWebSession object on the server-side. Over a dozen demos are included, with full source.

WebHub helps you web-enable existing Delphi and C++ applications. Even your HTML and Javascript code can be re-used. WebHub projects can easily be worked on by a team of people with varying skill levels.

Fully dynamic WebHub pages take 8 to 50 milliseconds to produce on current hardware, using ISAPI. A dual-processor P200 box with 128 meg RAM can do 36 page requests per second using just a single EXE.

WebHub expects you to want to write custom features. The "web action" class provides for that, giving programmers the ability to activate any functionality from the web. WebHub runs on all major Windows web servers and you can change servers without recompiling your apps. You can maintain your web applications remotely, and you can build your own "web action" components. You can use the debugger to work on your EXE (no need to fight DLLs), and you can stop/replace/restart your application without bringing down the web server.

WebHub sites are extremely easy to maintain. The HTML and Javascript is kept outside the Delphi/C++ project, so that it can be maintained by a page layout specialist without even requiring recompilation of the application. Using WebHub, you can control how many database connections you want to have open, and thus use a limited SQL license. The cost of scaling to additional boxes is a matter of software configuration and obtaining a hub license for each additional box.

WebHub scales in two ways. (a) On a single machine, run multiple instances of your EXE to support higher traffic. (b) Using a cluster of machines, have requests from new surfers sent around the cluster providing linear scalability. The Hub serves as process controller on each machine, and ensures that surfers are routed to the least-busy EXE on the machine, and to the next available machine in the cluster. The runners are configured to time-out after N seconds if all EXEs are too busy.

WebHub has features that address all of these issues, without relying solely on cookies or IP#. User login/password checks are not limited to NT security rules; you can validate people against an in-house user or "membership" database.

There is an active WebHub community that participates in free discussions by e-mail. There is a full-time technical support department available for private questions and consultation. There is an on-line technical support knowledgebase which is searchable via the web. HREF Tools Corp. is highly responsive to trends. In-line releases with new features are made available to customers by download at no extra charge. The WebHub portfolio contains sites built in a wide variety of industries.