Windows 95/98/NT/2000 compatibility

[Daniel Corbier]

Lately a number of people have inquired about my DLL component's
(compiled with PB/DLL 5) compatibility with Windows 2000 and
other platforms. I can tell them that I've tested the DLL with
Windows 95 and 98, and I have customers who reported using it
with NT. I haven't heard yet from customers who mentioned using
my DLL with Win 2000, although I'm pretty sure there must be some
out there.

Rather than explain that my DLL will probably work with 2000,
I want to able to confidently say Yes, it will work under Win2K.
Someone had asked about PB/DLL 6.0 and Win2K. How about PB 5.0
(and how about PB/CC?).

I noticed that there's an $OPTION (or #OPTION in PB 6)
metastatement. Does the default Option 4 work only
with 95/98 and NT 4, or is it just a lowest common denominator
for that and 2000 as well? Is Option 3 an even better lower
common denominator if you want to include NT 3 users? Would
there be any performance penalty for non-NT 3 users with
option 3? Is there a particular performance advantage in
compiling a special DLL with Option 5 for Windows 2000 users?


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Daniel Corbier
UCalc Fast Math Parser
http://www.ucalc.com

[Chris Boss]

Daniel;

While I can't answer your question about the $OPTION compiler
directive, I can say this much :

Win 2K compatibility has a lot more to do with API calls than
anything else. In each version of Windows, Microsoft has added
new API calls, phased out obsolete API calls and modified some
API calls.

It is important to get the latest docs on the API to make sure
you are using API calls correctly for the latest version,
but are still compatible with the earlier versions.

You need to have your DLL "Tested" thoroughly on "all platforms"
if you want to guarantee Win 2K compatibility. There is no other
way. This is why a good "Beta" program for your software is
important, since you can make sure that you have Beta testers for
every platform.

When I was beta testing my DLL (GUI runtime) I specifically asked
Beta testers what platforms they were using, so I could have it
tested on Win 95/98/NT and 2K .


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[Daniel Corbier]

There are no direct API calls in my DLL component, and I don't
have a line of ASM code either. All of it is native PB code.
So hopefully that wouldn't be an issue.

The current version of my component was thoroughly beta tested
for a very long time (in excess of 10 months). It was released
before Windows 2000 was out, and using PB 5.0. It won't be a
while before I can release the next version. I'm mostly trying
to find out about compatibility of the version that is already
out. And then there will be Windows Me, and whatever future
version that will come after. So I want to have a general sense
of compatability issues with PB and the various Windows versions
out there.

I do have an online questionnaire for my products that people
fill out. And now that I look at it, I realize that I ask
all kinds of questions, but now which operating system they're
using it with. So I'll have to look at that.

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Daniel Corbier
UCalc Fast Math Parser
http://www.ucalc.com

[Chris Boss]

Daniel;

Have any of your end users reported problems with any platform ?

If you don't get any reports of problems, then likely your OK.

If you don't make any API calls, then the only possible problem
would be when your DLL calls the OLE API from the runtime code
generated by the compiler for variable length strings. I doubt
you would have any problem with this, since not only does PB
depend on the OLE DLLs, so does VB and VB works on all platforms.

If your DLL works on NT, it will likely work on Win 2000, since 2000
is more like NT than 95/98.

Usually the biggest problems are with API calls changing on a new
platform, so I can't imagine you having any problems with a DLL
that doesn't make any API calls.

I do know that DLLs created with PB 5.0 (as well as 6.0) work on
WIN 2000. My DLL, EZGUI has been successfully used on all platforms
and was Beta tested on Win 2K, NT, 98, 95 and there weren't any
platform related problems.



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