Currency Server Overview

When the software is implemented on a web server, visitors can see prices in their "language" without having to use third-party sites for currency-related services and without being subject to external advertising and cookies. Currency Server is one of the fastest and most cost-effective tools to add value to an e-commerce site. Either alone or as part of a complete internationalization effort, Currency Server can easily plug into an existing system and open up a new world of opportunities and user experience.

Advantages

• Support for a wide and diverse set of exchange rate data formats, protocols and providers (both subscription-based and free services), plus plug-in filters (sample source code included) to handle custom formats
• User-friendly configuration through Control Panel
• COM Automation (ActiveX) interface provides currency exchange rate information, conversion and rounding functionality to local clients (C, C++, Visual Basic, VBS, ASP, PHP, Java, JavaScript, Excel, etc.)
• SOAP interface provides XML-based currency exchange rate information, conversion and rounding functionality to local and remote clients on any platform (C, C++, CORBA, Java, JavaScript, Perl, Python, PHP, AppleScript, Visual Basic, VBS, ASP, etc.)
• Collection of exchange rate data can be invoked manually, via script or batch file, or through built-in or system scheduling
• Notifies site administrators in case of problems relating to the connection or to the contents of the remote data (alerts via application log entries, on-screen information and Windows messaging, e.g. email, pager, etc.)
• One-click disaster recovery (change provider of exchange rate data while retaining settings, code and all other work)
• Supports different types of data download (for exchange rate updates) and upload (for posts) protocols (HTTP, FTP, file, etc.), firewalls, proxy servers and network authentication systems (Windows NT Challenge/Response, etc.)
• Knows how to properly triangulate and round to, from and between euro currencies, as required by European Commission and local consumer protection regulations
• Monitors the status of the European Monetary Union as well as other similar institutions which may exist in the future, and deals with currencies joining it, becoming a sub-unit of another currency, being replaced by it, and even the unlikely possibility of a region abandoning an existing monetary union. Takes automatic actions and issues helpful information messages to administrators.
• Rounding options can be manually changed for each currency (subject to special considerations for euro currencies, explained in documentation)
• Caches the currency data and keeps satisfying client requests even when the remote exchange rate data is unavailable or corrupt
• Optimized for performance. Individual client requests never cause unnecessary network or file accesses, but rather are satisfied accessing cached data, which is refreshed by a separate task. Benchmarks using the Automation interface resulted in the completion of approximately 5000 exchange rate conversion requests per second on a single-CPU system (800 MHz Pentium III running Windows 2000 Server and IIS).
• Designed for 24x7 servers based on Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 and Windows XP (runs as a service, installation does usually not require reboot, operation does not require logon, etc.)