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FEATURE
FTP Suite
"We got to move these files and folders..."
Issue: 4.2 (November/December 2005)
Author: Joe Nastasi
Author Bio: Joe Nastasi is the president of Pyramid Design, the developers of A-OK! The Wings of Mercury, A-OK! Spacecraft Simulation System, and FTP Suite.
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 12,307
Starting Page Number: 11
Article Number: 4208
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Excerpt of article text...
FTP Suite is a product offered by my company, Pyramid Design. It is a software component that allows REALbasic developers to add the File Transfer Protocol to their REALbasic applications. It is implemented as a collection of classes and modules; some are internal to FTP Suite and some can be modified by the developer. The FTP Suite architecture is composed of eight software components and is outlined in Figure 1 and Table 1.
FTP Suite can perform two types of FTP operations. Smart Sequences perform an entire FTP sequence from logon to logoff. They are suited for applications where transfers occur mostly under the client program's control and for transfer sequences that affect entire directories or multiple files in the same directory. Smart Commands perform partial FTP sequences (usually one or two FTP commands) and are best suited for clients that cannot predict what FTP actions will be needed beforehand or for clients who need to be able to transfer files beyond the standard folder-to-folder operation. Smart Commands give the developer more flexibility.
Product History
FTP Suite started out as a simple FTP module for a consulting client in the summer of 2002. The requirement was simply to send and retrieve a single file. At that time, there were only a couple of FTP examples on the Internet and there were no professionally-supported FTP components at all. At that time, I decided to use this contract as a way to jump-start the development of a full-featured FTP component for REALbasic.
I structured the development agreement so that I retained ownership of the code. Since it was for an internal tool, the client was only too happy to save some money by allowing me to retain the rights to the code developed under the contract. In this way, I actually received some up-front money to start development of a product that would continue to provide revenue in the future.
The initial concept was to provide a component that stressed simplicity of setup over flexibility. Since a majority of REALbasic users were beginners or were new to REALbasic, I felt they could be better served with a simple interface to the FTP protocol.
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