REALbasic Professional Edition includes all of the capabilities of REALbasic Standard Edition and adds these Professional Edition features:

Cross-platform compilation
REALbasic Professional Edition lets you create software for Windows, Linux and Macintosh from a single code base. Supported versions are:

Windows 98/NT/Me/2000/XP
Mac OS X and Classic Mac OS
Any x86-based Linux distribution with GTK+ 2.0 (or higher), glibc-2.3 (or higher) and CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System), which includes:


SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop
Red Hat Desktop
Extended database support
REALbasic Professional Edition adds the ability to connect to multi-user database servers like Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, FileMaker Server, MySQL, Sybase, Openbase, Frontbase, 4D Server or any ODBC data source. Note: Microsoft SQL Server ODBC drivers for Mac OS X are available from Actual Technologies.

Database Encryption
REAL SQL databases support AES 256 encryption.

NOTE: Encrypting existing REAL SQL Databases may result in unreadable databases, even with the correct key. This does not affect database files created with Release 4 or later. DO NOT try and encrypt existing database files without creating a new database file and copying data. This problem will be addressed in the next release of REALbasic.

Container controls
REALbasic Professional enables you to create reusable custom controls that save time, reduce code complexity and promote a consistent user interface. Container controls may be exported and reused by any other REALbasic Professional Edition user.

Console applications
REALbasic Professional Edition can create command line applications that can run in the background or when no user is logged in to the computer.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
The Professional Edition provides the ability to make secure internet connections using SSL, including the ability to switch to and from secure mode on demand. It also supports secure listening, which is required for SSL-enabled servers.

AutoDiscovery class
The AutoDiscovery class is used to create network-aware applications that require no set-up by the end user. A REALbasic application that uses AutoDiscovery can find other AutoDiscovery-enabled applications on the network and establish a connection automatically.

Cross-platform remote debugging
REALbasic Professional Edition includes a remote debugger that enables you to observe your code execution on one computer as it runs on another computer. The remote debugger enables you to write your code on Windows, for example, and test it on Linux and Macintosh. Because the remote debugger is based on the TCP/IP protocol, you can even use the remote debugger to test your application on a machine in another location, such as a customer site.

ServerSocket control
Enables the rapid development of highly scalable TCP/IP server applications. Automatically manages incoming connections and scales to thousands of simultaneous connections. See the article "Write a Webserver in 100 Lines of Code or Less" as an example.

Technical support
Your REALbasic Professional Edition license key provides you with access to web-based technical support directly from REAL Software for as long as your update plan remains current.

REALbasic's code structure (syntax) is very similar to Visual Basic bit unlike Visual Basic, REALbasic works.