Astatech is out of business
Astatech chose to sell slow buggy middle-ware and vaporware VOIP software... then slander, defame their customers.
What did Astatech try to solve?
In the hey days of Delphi, before websites became ubiquitous, there was this idea of making three-tiered clients and re-purposing them to work over the internet. Swing, C# WPF, ActiveX was the craze.
This idea - the need to separate the database logic - so instead of peppering your forms with TTable, TQuery, you had to make a separate EXE or DLL that would run on a server, and Delphi apps would connect to them.
Great idea right?
The new craze started CORBA1, ORB (Object Request Broker) and various forms of inter-op (SOAP, GSOAP, WSDL, etc.) to share objects across the Internet.
Delphi’s version of three-tiered was marred by slow ClientDataSet, poor Internet components, blocking and non-thread-safe VCL, slow MIDAS.DLL.
I was able to successfully replace Asta with remotedb and it's absolutely awesome!!!! I've been trying to replace for 8 years. Loving the product - performance is fantastic!
- TMS RemoteDB Testimonial
(Source: www.tmssoftware.com)
AstaTech is middle-ware loosely derived from ICS Midware2 - a small freeware middle-ware from ICS.
What Astatech does:
An Astatech server uses WinINET to send TClientDatasets over TCP/IP.
The client would send a SQL statement, the server would respond with a ClientDataSet.
The TClientDataSet would get loaded into ASTA Query, ASTA Table.
The CRUD statements would be cached on-client, and the SQL statement sent to Asta Server for the database to execute the commands.
By the power of grayskull TDataSource, AstaServer provided servers which connected to different databases, load the data to TClientData and use WinINET to serve them over the ‘net.
What went wrong with Astatech’s software:
Delphi VCL is not thread safe. Certain lengthy database operations are not thread safe. This meant, doing something as simple as repeatedly clicking to refresh would hang your app.
The resultant code generated from older Delphi versions is very slow. The slowness meant large datasets would take “forever” to load.
Due to a combination of non-thread-safe TDataset usage, AstaServer would hang and need to be restarted often.
An issue with TClientDataSet was discovered and fixed years later3.
An issue with MIDAS was fixed years later.4
Abusive Technical Support
Astatech would use the playbook of Delphi vendors - defaming, insulting, slandering, posting slurs on the newsgroups.
Astatech employees would post rude messages such as -
Their newsgroups would be eventually empty-out.
What is the different between Asta Server and implementations such as ElevateDB, or PHP?
In ElevateDB, ElevateSoft kept the database logic separate from VCL. An ElevateDB server would run as “service” (non-visible) mode and use Windows API to send messages to communicate between the EXE and service.
In ICS Midware and JediVCS, same as above.
Delphi has no concept of application-states. Delphi has this concept of Form (VCL) and click-through logic instead of state-machines. In PHP, you can restart the server and resume your business, on part due to text-based cookies which store the states of the client’s interactions.
Imagine a Delphi app, where the application state is stored in cookies than in-app. That would be new and refreshing idea…
In Delphi, an app-restart means constantly logging-in, constantly re-opening the various VCL forms… and re-testing the same…
New Business Ventures - Asta SIP, Asta VOIP, Asta Skywire…
ASTA sold SIP, VOIP implementations. Unfortunately, it was broken and couldn’t work. It wasn’t compatible with any known SIP-phone hardware system, any known hardware-based PBX system.
ASTA Video Conferencing doesn’t support nor follow any standard, despite the buzz-words on their website.
Which Asterisk-compatible PBX system does ASTA connect or interoperate with?
You have to purchase the SDK to integrate to the hardware SIP phone, then use the phone’s SDK, PBX SDK and get it to work! Ah.
The Directory is more important.
Customers wanted an immediate solution - something that connected over the internet, used POTS (Plain old telephone system). Skype came out in 2003. AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo soon provided phone-call-out, video-call functionality to their instant messengers.
The problem isn’t calling - it’s who to call, and ability to check if on-line, and whom to connect to. If you wanted to setup a web-meeting, you need to get the other party load a secure EXE, the secure EXE needs to setup an end-to-end protocol to connect two or more users.
Seeing how easy it was to obtain a Skype ID, and nearly everyone had a Skype ID, ICQ and so on, why re-invent the wheel?
Astalavista
It is believed in 2021, the owners of Astatech moved on. The house where Astatech is located at, was sold in 2022.
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