A content management tool for .Net

Those of you who are irrevocably committed to using .Net as the foundation of your Web applications infrastructure will no doubt be delighted to hear that what is billed as the first native .Net content management solution is now available.

CMS400.Net from Ektron (see links below) is built on the Microsoft .Net Framework making it easily integrated with other .Net products and systems. CMS400.Net also bundles Ektron’s eWebEditPro+XML authoring tool to simplify the business development and use of XML data.

Designed to provide user-based content management through a purely browser-based interface, CMS400.Net integrates with .Net development tools such as Visual Studio .Net and server platforms such as Microsoft Server 2003 and supports access to and creation of Web services.

Pitched as being as secure as J2EE-based systems the CMS400.Net development environment is claimed to be four times more cost effective than J2EE.

Ektron lists the key .Net features of CMS400.Net as:

* Paging functionality built into the engine.

* A rich permissions model.

* A full Web service API.

* Controls to use within visual environments.

* New menu object for building Web site menus.

* Collections that offer increased functionality.

* Better groups management: the ability to have groups within groups, as in Active Directory.

* The built-in design to be able to be installed on multiple machines.

* Distributed transactional support.

Running on MS Windows 2003/2000/XP with Visual Studio .Net and ASPX.Net under

Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) 5.0+, CMS400.Net supports MS SQL and MSDE.

Pricing for Extron’s CMS400.Net is $25,000 for a .Enterprise license and $45,000 for a .Server license.