Professional Edition is exactly one thing: an SDK = Software Development Kit, specifically intended for use by software developers and OEMs. It specifically provides access to the following aspects of the product:
- Complete, annotated source-code to the various script programs – "Builder," "System," and "XML/Catalog" – which drive the inner workings of the product. (Normally, these assets are provided only in "delivered = object-code-only" form.)
- Three separate APIs = Application Program Interfaces to the underlying product, all of which are fully annotated and each of which builds upon the other: DLL, Delphi Component, OCX Control. (Source-code to the DLL is not provided, since it is intentionally subject to internal change without notice, but an exhaustive description of its entry-points is furnished along with Delphi source-code.)
- Several hundred pages of additional, "purely geek-to-geek," online documentation.
- The fundamental capabilities of all ChimneySweep jobs are precisely the same, no matter which Edition was used to produce them. And, the capabilities to produce jobs (using the Job Editor Wizard ...), between Traditional and Professional Editions, are likewise "exactly the same." Thus, Professional Edition does not provide you with any "wizard-based" capabilities that the core product does not already have.
- Instead, Professional Edition is most-likely to be useful to an enterprise which intends to replace all or part of the programming which we provide with custom programming that is exactly suitable to their intended purpose.
If the above statements do not apply to you, you do not need Professional Edition.
Professional Edition users should also note that the ability to subsequently deploy their customized solutions is further limited by license: a Runtime Edition license must be installed on each computer that is to execute this functionality. We provide you with a custom runtime-license installer by which to do this. (Alternatives, such as blanket or quantity license agreements, are also obtainable.)