Page 235 - DCAP404 _Object Oriented Programming

Object-oriented Programming

Notes The company is targeting the product at corporates and educational institutions. It has
already booked orders to install PPPshar, which was released on April 14, at five Chennai-
based firms, including Grundig Electronics (India), the Indian subsidiary of the German
consumer electronics giant.

The brothers point out that the product is also ideal for entrepreneurs wanting to set up
“cybercafes” (in which visitors can access the Internet by paying a per hour fee) at a low
capital investment. “There are not too many companies in the country who can afford to
set up cybercafes using leased lines as the costs are too high. With PPPshar even small
companies with a few PCs can afford to get into this business,” points out Mr. Babu.
In fact, one of the first customers for PPPshar is the Chennai- based Quality Business
Management (QBM), a private company providing electronic desktop publishing, Public
Call Office and E-mail services at a prominent business location in the city. Using PPPshar,
QBM has set up a ‘Cyber Circle’ in the same facility by hooking up five PCs to the Net to
provide Internet-related information services.
A dozen Chennai-based firms and an equal number from the other metros have approached
PPP for signing up as distributors for the product. According to Mr. Babu, five companies
from other countries have also evinced interest based on the information they had obtained
from the company’s Web site (www.pppindia.com).
According to the brothers, Grundig (India) officials are so impressed with the product that
they had offered to help the company market it in Germany and other parts of the world.
“In fact, one of the directors in the parent company was so impressed with the product that
he said we should set up shop in Germany rather than continuing here,” says Mr. B.Shrinivas,
the eldest among the three.
As for competition from similar products from overseas companies, Mr. Babu says he is
aware of just one – ‘WebShare’ from Canada-based Protec Microsystems Inc. However, he
points out that Web Share allows simultaneous shared Internet access for only three PCs.
The company is currently working on another Java-based software, PPPftp, which is a File
Transfer Protocol (FTP) software for uploading and downloading information from the
Net. According to Mr. Babu, an important feature of this software, not available to other
FTP client software, is the ability to resume interrupted file transfers. “This enables users
to download large software from the Internet. Even if the line gets disconnected in between,
PPPftp will resume from where it left off during the last at tempt,” he says.
Apart from product development, PPP also designs and hosts Web pages for clients on its
Web site. The company’s Web site at tracts visitors by posting several free resources – a
trade bulletin board, a matrimonial service, a “herbal petrol” forum (which discusses the
Ramar Pillai episode), a law forum for NRIs investing in India and a Web forum for
Internet users in Chennai.

10.5 Summary

 Virtual functions do not really exist but it appears real in some parts of a program. To
make a member function virtual, the keyword virtual is used in the methods while it is
declared in the class definition but not in the member function definition.

 Early binding refers to the events that occur at compile time while late binding means
selecting function during the execution. The late binding is implemented through virtual
function.

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