I am contemplating buying the upgrade to full Intraweb for Delphi 7 Professional. Please share your experience and whether you think it would be wise doing my web development with these components.
EDIT: It would really be great to have some more feedback on this - thanks in advance:
I have a web app built with IW tools that runs for months at a time without any need for restarts. It handles registration, login, downloads, logging, and has a MS SQL Server backend. It scales well for concurrent sessions, but IW components insulated me from writing the internals for that.
IW is a great set of tools, but there are a few non-intuitive challenges that crop up, and the priority support (that comes with the pro license) paid for itself many times over. Once I got my major application running, I admit that I've let my license lapse, because I can continue to maintain the software without the pro license - I can live with the last version for which I have a license.
An additional benefit is some of the excellent fourth party (?) tools that have been developed, e.g. the Arcana Elite suite, now open-source.
At some point, IW may add a killer feature, and I'll purchase again.
HTH.
I would ask for working website links. I have yet to see anything spectacular in IntraWeb. Also, the documentation is never up to date.
I believe the current wise choice is to investigate Oxygene, and for guaranteed longer term support, I'd suggest C#.
Because I was looking for a way do build web-applications with Delphi, and was not content with IntraWeb and other options, I have started this project: xxm. It takes a radically different approach and mimics the combination of HTML and code like PHP and ASP uses, and auto-compilation behind the scenes.
I know, it's new, really basic, but it's built for speed, performance and small footprint. But I feel it could really use a few more Delphi-adepts that like to build websites with it.
I have used Intraweb in 2 applications. Both are rock solid stable.
If you want to reuse existing delphi code, then Intraweb is a good solution. In my case, I took datamodules straight out of an existing desktop app and added them into the web app without any changes.
If you are looking to start a new web application from scratch though, you should also look at other technologies.
You may find these more suitable. Currently I am tossing up between python and asp.net for my next web app.
The new Intraweb (VCL for the web) is definitely worth the money : asyncEvents on almost all controls, deployment to apache on windows and on Linux (Wine), possibility to import great open source and commercial javascript libraries (ExtJS, JQuery...).. I've been working on intraweb for 4 years now and I've never been disappointed. The documentation sucks (compared to the MSDN for example), but once you get the idea (lot of surfing, samples), you will love it. The best part is, I think, that you get to develop your webApps exactly as you would do with your win32 Apps.
I do work on asp.net occasionally: it is a great tool too, but I don't like the fact that you have to use so much external libraries (ajax framework..) and that you have to use IIS (I stopped counting the security patches :p) . I believe that you can be more productive with VCL for the Web, especially if you purchase TMS Intraweb components Pack Pro (other components are available for free : IWElite from arcana..).
DELPHI := FUN :) Best Regars