Knowledge Base

This article discusses the purpose of SSL/TLS server certificates and how to create a certificate that can be used for testing purposes on your own development system.

OpenSSL is an open source toolkit that can be used to create test certificates, as well as generate certificate signing requests (CSRs) which are used to obtain certificates from trusted third-party Certificate Authorities.

When deploying an application using one or more SocketTools .NET classes, an unhandled System.BadImageFormatException error occurs with the message "An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format (exception from HRESULT: 0x8007000B)".

When upgrading or deploying an application using one or more SocketTools .NET classes, an unhandled System.DllNotFoundException error occurs. A stack trace shows it is the result of a System.TypeInitializationException being thrown when the application first starts.

To redistribute an application created using one or more SocketTools components, the application must initialize each component with a runtime license key. This is discussed in several places in the help, including the Licensing Information section, the Initialization section in the Developer's Guide and the initialization functions and/or methods in the Technical Reference. It is

SocketTools uses the Microsoft CryptoAPI and Schannel security package to implement support for secure connections using TLS. Which versions of TLS are available will depend on the version of the operating system you are using.

When you build your first C/C++ application using SocketTools, you may encounter compile or link errors. These are usually the result of the project needing to be configured with the correct paths for the required header files and import libraries.

The Visual Studio releases supported by SocketTools 11 depends on the edition and languages being used. The following table lists which editions are compatible with Visual Studio and whether the edition is supported with that version.

SocketTools uses the Windows CryptoAPI and Schannel security provider to provide support for Transport Security Layer (TLS), which is used with secure connections. The latest version of TLS that is available on the Windows XP platform is TLS 1.0 and cannot be used to establish secure connections.

When you create an application using the SocketTools 11 .NET Edition components and you're ready to deploy it, you must ensure it is initialized correctly. This is done by either providing a runtime license key to the Initialize method or setting the RuntimeLicense attribute for the executable assembly. It is important to note your runtime