OmniPilot Software announced that Lasso Professional Server 8.5 (LP 8.5) has entered Public Beta 3. Lasso developers can sign up for to participate in the public beta at lassobeta@omnipilot.com. LP 8.5 takes Lasso beyond Web scripting, making it a powerful and more advanced programming language.

"LP 8.5 is packed with innovative features and exciting functionally including numerous customer feature requests that come directly from our dedicated Lasso community," said Brett Circe, president of OmniPilot Software, Inc.

The following lists a few of the top new features of LP 8.5:

- Universal Binary for Intel Mac: Native support for the best speed and compatibility.

- LJAX: Supports Web 2.0 techniques for modern dynamic web design. Includes Lasso AJAX tags and JavsScript functions working together to enable interactive page updates.

- Support for many Native Data Sources including: Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MySQL, SQLite, ODBC, Filemaker and OpenBase.

- Built in LDAP Integration: Integrate Lasso with office data and login systems.

- Specify data sources within inlines. Prepared statements allow faster DB operations. Create multiple result sets from a single inline.

- Shell Support: Allows access to native processes within the OS.

- Enhanced Site Admin: View, prioritize and abort threads from the Admin.

- Email Enhancements: Direct sending to remote SMTP servers, SSL support, improved encoding speed, better support for attachments.