ADV: OneGate v5.x released - and on sale!

[Fairlight]

Announcing OneGate v05.00.00!
=============================

I'm pleased to announce the release of OneGate v5, the latest version of
our flagship product!  

This release has been several years in coming, but the extra power and
convenience it brings to developers is worth it.  One of the things I keep
saying about being a developer is that you're a better developer if you
use the software you design and code.  As someone who does a good amount
of integration, I would personally buy this upgrade if I hadn't written it
myself.  It includes features I've wanted for several years, and just never
gotten around to implementing until now.

So, what are the new features?

First and foremost, a template/inclusion system.  Anyone who's ever used
PHP includes or Apache Server-Side Includes (SSIs) will recognise the sheer
power of this feature.

Templates and inclusion let you specify files to inject into your output
stream, be they static files you always keep around, or dynamic ones you
create for several spots of dynamic output on a web page, XML, or whatever
your output consists of.  Optionally, you can have OneGate auto-delete
temporary files that are created just for that run.  As well, commands can
be executed on-the-fly, and their output included in the output stream.  To
top it all off, you can also directly include field values that have been
submitted to OneGate on any particular request, without involving outside
programming.

Inclusion is recursive, so if your output stream calls on a file which
calls another five files or commands in a chain of includes, any of the
three includes buried at the Nth level will still be acted upon.  (The
one exception is that field inclusion will not cause recursion based on
the contents of a field--doing so would be a huge security risk due to
injection possibilities.)

The template/inclusion system is particularly handy for filePro developers.
I speak from experience.  I have often wished, whiled editing a
multi-thousand-line processing table that consists of HTML and JavaScript,
that I could break things up and pull most of the static content out of
files, only bothering to have the (usually tiny!) dynamic parts actually in
filePro code.  Well, that and more is now possible!

Also included in the new release are some handy diagnostic and
alerting/reporting features.  

For starters, the new log file format that's available will include
enhanced debugging, as well as the session ID of the request, making
things much easier to correlate errors to files if things go askew during
development (or if someone tosses you data you don't expect and didn't plan
for, or if filePro crashes, etc.).

In addition to that, an exciting new feature is the ability to configure
OneGate to mail error messages to anyone you like.  This can be done
globally, and also overridden at a local application level.  If you want
errors for one task to go to one web developer, and another task to go to a
different developer, but any not covered by specific definitions to go to
an entirely different list of recipients (or single recipient, of course),
that's entirely possible!  What does that mean for you, the developer or
admin?  It means no more waiting for customers to -maybe- alert you to a
problem they encountered on your web site.  You can be alerted as errors
occur, and stay on top of most issues without relying on anyone else.  I
know this has been a wishlist item for a while, and it's finally in place.

Additionally, while doing some recent integration with a payment processor
who does postbacks to the seller's web site, it came to my attention that
not all gateways allow every field passed to them to be returned.  I've
added a feature that allows you to call OneGate using the $PATH_INFO
section of the URL, whether you use POST or GET.  No fields are no longer
absolutely necessary to pass that one crucial bit of information to
OneGate!

Did I mention that v5.x is a completely backwards-compatible drop-in
replacement for v4.x?  All new features need to be enabled/configured to be
used, so you won't break anything you currently have deployed by upgrading!

With these powerful features being added, it was time for a major version
upgrade.  As with the v4.x upgrade, the v5.x upgrade is a paid upgrade.
Traditionally, list price has always been $995, and upgrades have been
$795.  That being said, here's what I'm doing for the first two weeks of
product launch:

Until 11:59pm EDT, August 7th, 2012, the following prices are in effect:

  New OneGate 5.x purchases: $595 USD
OneGate 4.x to 5.x Upgrades: $395 USD

Additionally...  If you own a site license from one of the bundles which
granted you a site license to OneGate v4.x, the purchase of a single
upgrade will grant you a site license upgrade!

After the launch special ends, list prices for new and upgrade versions
revert to their normal levels, and site license upgrades will have to be
negotiated (I rarely offer such creatures).

I have an upgrade page set up for the upgrade pricing.  Only users who have
previously purchased OneGate v4.x may access the page.  Owing to a lot of
other work to do and a shortfall of time, I took the fastest way towards
handling access to that page.  Bear with me for a second while I explain...

If you've previously purchased OneGate 4.x, the OneBridge/OneGate/RawQuery
4.x Bundle, the Fairlight SuperPack, or the Fairlight UltraPack, you were
given a download account via email to the address you used at the time
of purchase.  I took those access credentials and imported them into
one password file.  There were some duplicates (say, someone purchased
4.x standalone, but later bought a bundle of some sort).  Apache won't
honour more than the first password entry found for a user.  (I tried...)
So...  If you need to look up your account information at the link below,
please try looking up your email address in the order I listed the
products/bundles above, as that's the order in which duplicates were left
standing.

If you still can't retrieve your credentials to get at the upgrade page,
you can email me to request your account information.  Sorry, I seriously
didn't have time to code a multi-table MySQL web interface to try all
the possible license tables just now.  Not when it's faster to just look
up accounts by hand.  And honestly...even a completely new 5.x right now
during the launch special is $200 less expensive than the normal upgrade
price, if you think about it...  :)

To find your previous product account access information with which you can
access the upgrade page, visit:
     http://www.fairlite.com/cgi-bin/get_product_account_new

To upgrade to OneGate v5.x, visit:
     http://www.fairlite.com/fc/products/onegate5upgrade/

To purchase a new version of OneGate v5.x, visit:
     http://www.fairlite.com/fc/products/onegate/

If you want to get in on the new, powerful features of OneGate v5, now's
the time!  This pricing is available for a limited time only!

Bests,

Mark Luljak
Fairlight Consulting