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VNA-2 Advanced Communications Engine
VNA-2 is an advanced software communications engine
that is at the heart of Informal's products.
It is the result of over four years of software
development. It is a robust and sophisticated comms engine used
to tie together Client and Server components wirelessly or wired,
over any form of transport mechanism.
Client platforms include Pocket PC, PalmOS, EPOC
OS, connected to Server engines over many transports, e.g. wireless
Ethernet (802.11b), Bluetooth, wired serial, USB, wired Ethernet,
etc.
The Server engine handles multiple clients over
any configuration, and runs on Win32.
Clients and Servers can also work as part of the
web-based Web VNA-2 Server, thus extending the power to the Internet.
The Web Server runs on Win32 and Linux.
VNA-2 consists of several components. At the heart
is a sophisticated client-server model, with extensible command
& control and data streaming protocols. Multiple clients connect
to servers for simultaneous sessions over a choice of transports.
Any sort of command structures can be implemented, and any sort
of data reliably streamed.
Also included is a lightweight but sophisticated
real-time streaming protocol called LDF. This can be used extensibly
for a wide variety of real-time streaming data uses.
LDF can either be run natively over RS-232 or USB,
or wrapped up within TCP/IP or UDP/IP.
Other bolt-on modules include digital image annotation,
embedded MS Office annotation, ADO/SQL database interface, and
RFID smart tag interfacing.
The core lower layer client and server components
are written in 'C', for portability. Upper layers are written
in C++ for ease of extensibility. A minimal client could be written
in 'C' or assembler.
Examples
Informal Software uses VNA-2 at the heart of its
enotate product range.
So for instance, Palm and Pocket PC PDAs can be
connected to a desktop via RS-232 serial, USB and wireless Ethernet.
enotate's electronic annotation is then enabled by implementing
a real-time annotation and mark-up streaming protocol over VNA-2.
As you draw on the screen of the PDA, so it appears in real-time
on the screen of an application (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Jpeg
editor, etc) on the desktop.
More so, the annotations can appear in real-time
on someone else's desktop connected to the Internet on the other
side of the world.
OEMs
Informal has a growing number of OEMs licensing
this technology.
Using VNA-2 enables quicker time-to-market with
a robust communications engine. So any sort of application that
requires a real-time link from a PDA application to a desktop
or web-based application can use VNA-2 as its underlying transport
engine.
Contact us at OEM@informal.com
to find more out about our VNA-2 Advanced Communications Engine
and what a license agreement or OEM relationship could do for
your product development plans.
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