<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<document url="http://castor.org/projects.xml">
  <properties>
    <title>Castor - A marketplace</title>
    <abstract>
       Useful information about commercial support for Castor.</abstract>
    <status>Final</status>
  </properties>
  <body>
    <title>Castor - A marketplace</title>
    <header>
    </header>

    <section title="Introduction">

       <p>As <a href="support.html">already</a> explained, Castor is an 
          open-source product. This means that the source code is available at 
          no charge and may be obtained using <a href="scm.xml">SVN</a> or
         <a href="download.xml">downloaded</a> via 
         <url>http://dist.codehaus.org/castor</url>.</p>

       <p>Due to the nature of the project, there is no guaranteed level of 
          support (of commercial quality) offered by the project and its 
          community. As outlined <a href="support.html">here</a>, the online
          <a href="index.html">documentation</a> is the best place to 
          start.</p>

       <p>Having said that, it is noteworthy to mention that there's plenty of 
        companies out there that offer ...</p>
        
        <ul>
            <li>(commercial) products based on Castor</li>
            <li>consulting services related to various aspects of Castor</li>
            <li>commercial support related to Castor</li>
        </ul>

        <p>This page provides you with various reference points, addressing 
           most of the above areas.</p>      
           
        <p>We hope that the information provided is of value to you, our customers,
           and we are more than happy to discuss any suggestions/recommendations
           related to this offering.</p>

    </section>

    <section title="Use of Castor in other open source projects">
        
        <p>This section identifies various (mainly) open source projects where 
           Castor is used and/or that offer tight integration with Castor or
           parts thereof.</p>
           
        <h3><a href="http://cocoon.apache.org">Apache Cocoon</a></h3>
            
            <p>Apache Cocoon is a web publishing framework built around the 
               concepts of separation of concerns and component-based web 
               development.</p>

            <p>As part of this framework, Cocoon provides a component, the 
               <b>CastorTransformer</b>, that marshalls an object hierarchy (for 
               which a mapping file or a class descriptor hierarchy exists) to 
               XML and inserts it as a stream of SAX events into a Cocoon 
               pipeline.</p>

            <p>Further information on the integration of Apache Cocoon and
               Castor can be found <a href="projects.xml">here</a>.</p>
        
    </section>
    
    <section title="Professional services">
        
        <p>Please find information about professional services related to
           Castor, as well as a registry of individuals/companies and their offerings 
           in this area <a href="professional-services.html">here</a>.</p>
           
    </section>

  </body>
</document>
