Welcome to an introduction to Valentina Embedded Server – a part of Valentina Developer Network. This is a non technical introduction for developers who may be new to databases, or the curious about this special developer product.

Welcome to an introduction to Valentina Embedded Server – a part of Valentina Developer Network.

Valentina Embedded Server is a special developer version of Valentina Database Server because it can be deployed royalty free and in unlimited quantities to your customers.

Valentina Embedded Server deployment rights are included with the Valentina Developer Network product. VDN also includes reseller pricing options (a 20% discount) off of Valentina Office Server. And if you are confused by that, you aren’t the only one!

Let’s take a look at Valentina Embedded Server, what it is, what you can do with it, and how it is different from Valentina Office Server.

So What is Valentina Embedded Server, Anyway?

Valentina Embedded Server is a faceless, database engine. It doesn’t have a user interface in a traditional sense. It is the kind of application known as a service, which runs quietly in the background – you start it up and just let it run.

Valentina Embedded Server is highly modularized. Many components perform specialized tasks, such as handling Unicode transformations, importing and exporting, compressing BLOBs of text and pictures, encryption and more.

There are special components to handle communicating with other components that may not live in the same directory as Valentina Embedded Server. Two examples of this are communication plug-ins that are added to a server’s PHP or Ruby on Rails directories. When installed, PHP and Ruby on Rails become aware of Valentina.

In every Paradigma ADK product, there is a similar communication plug-in. With these, IDE environments like Mirye Runtime Revolution, REAL Software’s REALbasic, Adobe Director and more can interface with Valentina – locally or remotely.

Embedded Server vs. Office Server: Features

These products are so similar, you’d think they were the same product, but with different names. That would be a very accurate assessment! So how are they different?

When you build a server application with Valentina Embedded Server, you utilize what’s known as a developer signature when you start it up. When it’s launched, it looks for a license file that contains your developer signature. Any application that you make that you want to interact with Valentina Embedded Server must pass this developer signature.

If you’ve ever wondered why the many demo projects for Valentina don’t run out of the box with Valentina Embedded Server – there is a good reason – the example projects do not have your developer signature in them.

On the other hand, while Valentina Office Server also uses a license file, that’s it for requirements. After you start it, it will accept communications from any plug-in that matches the criteria you set for connectivity.

Valentina Office Server is an “off the shelf” product – anyone can buy it. Support for Valentina Office Server can come from you, but whomever purchases it will also expect support from us. Valentina Embedded Server is a part of your solution – you can customize it so much that it won’t even look like a Valentina database; since it is a part of your product, you are entirely responsible for support for your customer.

Valentina Office Server has two features built in that Valentina Embedded Server does not, but can optionally have: SSL and Bonjour/Zero-Config. VDN developers can purchase special adapter licenses that enable SSL and Bonjour in Valentina Embedded Server. These can be deployed royalty free.

Every copy of Valentina Office Server includes a copy of Valentina Studio Admin and one year of update support. Valentina Embedded Server is a part of VDN, and VDN includes one copy of Valentina Studio Admin and two years of update support.

Web Applications and Valentina Embedded Server

Can I Write PHP and Ruby on Rails Applications around Valentina Embedded Server?

The number one question has a simple answer: yes!

Right out of the box, you can write web applications in PHP and Ruby on Rails with Valentina Embedded Server.

There are additional ADK licenses for PHP and Ruby/Ruby on Rails that manage local application development – these two ADKs are included with VDN Professional Edition, among other features.

All About Connections

When you initialize Valentina Embedded Server, it automatically supports five unnamed, simultaneous connections. VDN Developers can deploy this default version, royalty free, to their customers. Because, as a developer, you can build your own connection management system around the server, you can optimize the experience so those five connections can go a very long way. Based on customer feedback, the default configuration can easily handle normal business activity for offices with 20-40 users.

But what if you need more? This is where it can get confusing, because there are two ways to extend your customer experience - by adding connections or selling your customer a copy of Valentina Embedded Server Unlimited.

Valentina Embedded Server Unlimited is a “deploy” once per license product – you buy a license, and then sell that license to your customer. There is no limit to the number of connections it can support (based on the limits of your hardware and operating system). Most competing products of this sort start around $1,000, so it is a very economical way to support your customers.

But – what if you just want to give one of your customers five more connections – so that when they start their server, it supports 10 connections?

VDN developers can buy additional connection licenses that they can resell to their customers. These are deployment only – so one connection gets sold to one customer. Connections are also sold in bulk, so buying them one at a time can be expensive. At its highest, this can run around $20 per connection – but when bought in bulk, you can get this down to $1 per connection.

Connections stack on top of the default five. So the customer who wants ten connections doesn’t need to buy ten – they just need five more.

End of Mysteries

Are all mysteries revealed about Valentina Embedded Server? Probably not. If this article didn’t answer your question, be sure to ask and we can follow it up with a Part 2.