Blue World Releases Lasso Professional 7 -- Blue World Communications has released Lasso Professional 7, the latest version of its powerful Web-and-database serving middleware for Mac OS X and Windows. Version 7 features an embedded version of the MySQL database (enhancing both performance and security), improved Unicode and extended character set support, significant data source caching (which can dramatically improve performance of some database-driven sites), dynamic manipulation and generation of images, performance enhancements specifically for folks serving FileMaker Pro databases with Lasso, multi-server sessions (so user sessions can be tracked across multiple Lasso servers), support for Apache 2, improved database transaction support, enhanced support for dealing with SOAP, XML, and WSDL-based Web services, hundreds of new tags, and much more. Lasso Professional 7 costs $1,000, although Blue World is offering a $50 discount through 31-Dec-03; upgrade pricing is available for previous versions. Lasso Professional 7 requires Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar with either Apache 1.3, Apache 2, or WebSTAR V, and is fully optimized for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther and PowerPC G5 processors. A fully functional 30-day trial version is available from the Blue World Web site. [TJE]

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