Odyssey Software Announces the Release of CFCOM; Delivering COM Interoperability & ActiveX Control Support for Microsoft .NET Compact Framework-Based Applications.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

NEW ORLEANS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 19, 2003

Odyssey Software, a recognized leader in the development of mobile enterprise data access tools and infrastructure, announced today the release of CFCOM (.NET Compact Framework COM interoperability), providing a solution to one of the top requested features for the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework: the ability to easily use existing, or newly developed, COM objects and ActiveX controls in .NET Compact Framework-based applications.

By adding CFCOM to their arsenal, developers can take advantage of the rich functionality offered by existing COM objects and ActiveX controls, instantly. CFCOM represents the ideal migration path for Pocket PC and Windows CE developers moving to Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 and the .NET Compact Framework.

"If you have been developing enterprise applications for Pocket PC, you may have used third-party, or even invested in building your own COM (Component Object Model) components and ActiveX controls," commented Andreas Sjostrom, Microsoft MVP from Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. "The problem can be solved on a desktop PC using the full Microsoft .NET Framework and a feature called COM interoperability. However, as this feature is not included in the .NET Compact Framework, the only solution was to write a native custom flat-wrapper DLL in eMbedded Visual C++ for the component or control. This involved investing much time and money and the result is something specific to one component or one control. At least that was the only solution until Odyssey Software released their CFCOM product."

CFCOM is designed for re-use. The CFCOM classes may be used as-is, or used as a basis for strongly-typed wrapper classes. eMbedded Visual Basic developers can continue to use familiar COM objects and ActiveX controls when they move to the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework, without the need to learn C/C++ and P/Invoke. eMbedded Visual C++ developers can continue to write the performance-critical portions of their applications in C++, without the headaches of creating "native wrappers" and dealing with custom marshalling.

"For those developers that invested in COM and ActiveX components for mobile devices in the past, Odyssey Software provides great interoperability tools for the .NET Compact Framework," said David Rasmussen, lead project manager for the Developer and Platform Evangelism Division at Microsoft Corp. "Once again, Odyssey Software has done an excellent job extending the boundaries of our platform for those developers who need that extra power."

"The CFCOM component is a .NET component that can access COM components and even ActiveX controls from managed code. Behind the scenes it also includes a native component that does much of the actual COM interoperability," according to Christian Forsberg, Microsoft MVP from Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. "With CFCOM you can utilize COM objects that support the IDispatch interface. CFCOM makes it possible to set and retrieve property values, call methods, and even capture COM events. It also includes advanced type conversion functionality (aka marshalling) that handle a broad range of .NET Compact Framework and COM types (including Variant types). And the best part is that the footprint of CFCOM on the device is a little over 35K!"

About Odyssey Software

Odyssey Software is a recognized leader in the development of mobile enterprise data-access software infrastructure products for all Microsoft Windows powered mobile device platforms (Pocket PC, Pocket PC 2002, Windows CE, Windows CE.NET, Win32). Odyssey's products are enabling technology for remote data-access, dramatically reducing the time, complexity and effort required to build reliable, high-performance mobile applications that interact with enterprise servers over any public or private network - fully optimized for wireless. Mobile workforce solutions can be quickly developed and deployed, delivering interactive online real-time or casually-connected access to enterprise information, securely through corporate firewalls, using open industry-standard technologies such as XML Web services and standard Microsoft development tools such as eMbedded Visual Tools and Visual Studio .NET 2003. Additional information about Odyssey Software may be found at www.odysseysoftware.com.

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