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	TABLE OF CONTENTS Selecting Third-Party Components Third-party Component Issues Documentation & Updates

Like virtually all software, the applications we develop at eQuorum are built on code from others, from operating-system APIs, compilers, and development environments, to task-specific libraries. In this article, I discuss some of the issues we found in the latter case, specifically in what are called "third-party components."

eQuorum (www.equorum.com) is a 20-year-old software company with a focus on the management of large-format engineering documents. We have two primary products:

• ImageSite, a totally web-based document management solution with features for viewing and managing Microsoft Office, Engineering (raster), and CAD (MicroStation, AutoCAD, SolidWorks) documents (see Figure 1). ImageSite is written in Java, C++, and JavaScript. The ImageSite server runs under Windows Server, using the Tomcat Java Servlet environment, supports either Apache or IIS, and uses Oracle or SQL Server for database support. ImageSite web clients are supported in full mode on Windows environments using IE 6+, and in lesser modes on other clients.
• Plot Station, an engineering print-management solution directly supporting Office, Engineering, and CAD formats. Plot Station generates output for almost all wide-format high-speed printers and can provide output in industry-standard formats such as PDF or TIFF. Plot Station is written in C and C++, and is hosted on Windows Server environments. Plot Station clients are available for Windows environments using installable "thick" clients, and are also hosted in CAD environments such as AutoCAD or MicroStation.

[Click image to view at full size]

Figure 1: ImageSite displaying an AutoCAD vector file.

Early in our products' lifecycles, all of the functionality was produced in-house, even when it meant too many hours spent reverse engineering a file format. At times, that was the only path , as there were few third-party components available.

But as the computer industry has matured (and we've become less obsessed with "do it yourself"), we've found several functional areas of our apps where third-party components have become available. Here, I examine issues involved in using third-party components, specifically in experiences with two that are important parts of our products:

• ImageGear from AccuSoft (www.accusoft.com), a raster and vector toolkit that supports many industry-standard file formats.
• DWF Toolkit from Autodesk (www.autodesk.com), a toolkit for reading and writing Autodesk's DWF file format.

1 Selecting Third-Party Components | 2 Third-party Component Issues | 3 Documentation & Updates Next Page

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