This release of Silicon Office includes enhanced support for accessing Silicon Office applications, files, standard web based internet sites, and internet databases, directly from the internet, from within Silicon Office.

Existing users should already know that the unique design concept of Silicon Office, means that all information is stored in separate files eg. Documents, Programs, Memory, Forms for data input and display, and data base records are all stored in their own individual file. To access any of these files, the file is loaded from disk on the local machine, or from a shared network directory.

The concept of the internet has followed on from Silicon Office's concept of file based information. With the internet, a request is made from the users web browser to retrieve a file from an internet web server.  The only real difference between what we know as the internet, and what you know as Silicon Office, is the mechanism used to identify the location of the file (URL), and how the file is downloaded from it's server to the user (protocol). The internet is based primarily on the HTTP protocol. The URL includes the protocol followed by the file path and location. eg. HTTP://WWW.SILICONOFFICE.COM/MYFILE.HTM 

This release of Silicon Office now supports the retrieval of files using the HTTP and URL mechanisms found with the internet. This means you can publish your Silicon Office application, including all the files which make up your system, to your web site. They are then directly accessible using the Silicon Office application browser.

This is an ideal approach if you wish to centralise the storage of your applications and data, and make it globally accessible using the existing infrastructure of the internet. (Built-in security settings of the web and silicon office allows you to control who has access to what information and when).

You should consider using this approach if your organisation has:

• Multiple offices in different locations
• Field representatives eg. Travelling salesman or On-Sites engineers
• Remote Tele-workers

In addition, if you want to offer your customers or suppliers e-commerce enabled web access, or share and collaborate with common information between strategic partners, you may find that developing an application in Silicon Office, and posting the application to your web server, is a very cost effective solution.

Examples of Silicon Office enabled web applications include:

• Browsing of on-line catalogue and placing orders
• Invoicing, Payments
• Order tracking and progress
• Price updates, quotations and estimates
• Scheduling of diaries, service schedules and appointments