1. Caravan is a platform for building applications for OS/2, Windows
   and Linux.


The purpose of Caravan is to make it easy to build reliable, high
performance and mission critical applications using an object based
architecture. Caravan provides the objects which are needed for data
access, communications and user interface. Caravan language gives
the ability to weave these objects seemlessly into your  application.
The objects take care of the interfacing to the operating system and 
the networked world in the most efficient and reliable manner possible.
It is possible to build almost any type of application by using a combination
of the available objects. It interesting that there are just a few 
object types that are neccessary to do this.

Caravan itself is written in c++, making it possible to encapsulate
the major technologies which are needed for building advanced applications.
These are  multithreading, communications protocols, file systems, data
storage/access. Because of its very nature and  unique purpose, it necessarily
had to be built from scratch using a totally new approach. Though developed for
OS/2, it has been now been ported to other multi-threaded operating  systems.
There is a common source for all platforms, so all versions are released
simultaneously and there are no platform specific features or anomalies. Porting
to other unix based systems is a simple task.


2. Integrated Database and search engine.

All applications need a way to store data persistently and reliably.
Caravan has an in-built data base engine just for this purpose, which
can hold any type of information, including entire files. Extreme care has
been taken to ensure the integrity of data, while providing fast
and easy access. A search engine is integrated to this data base for
searching efficiently in huge amounts of text - common requirement
not properly met by existing database systems.

3. Integrated TCPIP services -- http,ftp,smtp

TCP/IP is the backbone of commuincation systems. Caravan provides objects
for integrating ftp, smtp and http into applications. Caravan can receive
and send data/message/mail using any of these protocols. 

4. File and Folder access.

Caravan interfaces to the underlying filesystem using folder and file objects.
This makes it possible to access the native file system in a platform independent
manner.


5. Eventhandling, queues and scheduling of tasks.

Messaging and communication require mechanisms for queuing and eventhandling.
Messages can be queued  fifo based, priority based, time based or a combination
of these, and eventhandlers can be written to handle these queues in  cocurrenlty
running threads with low cpu usage and instantaneous response to critical events.
Tasks can also be scheduled in the most flexible manner using schedulers.

6. Extensible through external utilities.

Caravan can take help of existing utilities for processing information and
performing complex tasks. So application builder can integrate existing expertise
to caravan's in-built capabilities.


7. XML support.

Caravan uses XML to describe its database tables and has a built-in parser to 
handle xml documents. XML documents are respresented as objects which can be 
accessed from caravan language.

8. Builtin Access Control and User management.

Caravan provides an object based mechanism for managing users and priveleges.
The user management features make it independent of the operating system and 
provides a flexible method to control user access.

9.Facility to run from encrypted application source.

The application code written in caravan language can be encrypted, protecting
the system and code from unathorised modifications and usage. Only caravan
decipher this code.


10. Caravan has been a given GUI interface for easy setup and installation.


Caravan is extremeley small for its features and capabilities, the entire
program will fit in a floppy disk with room to spare. It is being made available
on the web so that any one can, by just learning Caravan, can write very
powerfull and high performance applications, in a short period.