The .NET Enterprise Servers

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Building effective distributed applications requires a host of services. Windows DNA has provided many of those services, as does the .NET Framework. Whichever environment a developer uses, however, some potential problems aren't addressed. The goal of the .NET Enterprise Servers is to address a critical subset of these problems.

It's important to realize that although the .NET Enterprise Servers carry the .NET brand, they don't use the .NET Framework. Instead, at least in their first releases, they are based entirely on traditional Windows DNA technologies, such as COM. While all of these servers can be used with .NET Framework applications through the interoperability features the Framework provides, they're not intrinsically tied to the Framework. Because of this, they're not discussed in this book beyond the short summaries in this section.

The .NET Enterprise Servers don't rely on the .NET Framework

BizTalk Server 2000 can be used to integrate applications running on diverse platforms

The .NET Enterprise Servers include the following products:

• BizTalk Server 2000: One of the most challenging problems in enterprise computing today is the effective exchange of information among diverse applications running on a range of different systems. BizTalk Server 2000 is Microsoft's attempt at addressing this problem in a general way. Although the product has just one name, it includes two loosely related technologies: the Messaging Engine, which provides a way to define and transfer XML-based documents among applications, and the Orchestration Engine, offering a graphical interface for describing and then implementing business processes.

• Application Center 2000: Scaling out making a Windows DNA application able to handle more users by adding machines at all tiers can be an effective way of making an application able to support more simultaneous users. The problem with this approach is that it can also require complex, human-intensive, and expensive management of the machines involved. Application Center 2000 provides a set of management tools aimed at lowering both the cost and the complexity of deploying and managing Windows DNA applications on replicated servers.

  Application Center 2000 makes management of replicated server applications easier

• Commerce Server 2000: Most e-commerce Web sites have a great deal in common. Rather than reinventing the wheel for each new application, reusing existing code allows faster implementation with fewer defects. By providing a standard set of ASP pages, COM components, and other parts of an e-commerce application, Commerce Server 2000 allows creating e-commerce applications in less time and with less effort.

  Commerce Server 2000 provides packaged components for building e-commerce applications

• Host Integration Server (HIS) 2000: Windows DNA applications must often interoperate with applications running in other environments. One of the most important examples of this is communicating with applications on IBM mainframes, but there are many others. HIS 2000 provides a set of standard services for connecting with non-Microsoft environments. These services include the COM Transaction Integrator (COM TI), which allows an IBM mainframe transaction to become part of a COM+ transaction; the OLE DB for DB2 Provider, which allows access to DB2 databases; and the MSMQ-MQSeries Bridge, which allows messages to be exchanged between MSMQ and IBM's MQSeries product.

  HIS 2000 helps integrate Windows applications with those running on other platforms

• SQL Server 2000: This product is the next release of Microsoft's flagship database management system. Among the enhancements in this release are XML integration, allowing a client to issue SQL queries that return XML-defined data and to pass XML documents directly to the DBMS; support for up to 32 processors and 64 gigabytes of memory; and new data types, such as bigint, which provides a 64-bit integer, and sql_variant, which allows storing values of different types in the same column.

  SQL Server 2000 is the next generation of Microsoft's primary DBMS product

• Exchange Server 2000: Microsoft Exchange has become a very popular product for e-mail and related applications. Exchange Server 2000 is the next release of this messaging and collaboration services technology. It introduces the Microsoft Web storage system, a platform for building and hosting native Web applications. Exchange 2000 Conferencing Server also provides a client/server solution for voice, video, and data conferencing.

  Exchange Server 2000 is the next generation of Microsoft's core messaging product

• Mobile Information Server 2001: Wireless networks are rapidly becoming an indispensable part of the computing infrastructure. Mobile Information Server 2001 provides a platform for wireless applications, enabling communication with PDAs, mobile phones, and other portable devices. The product comes in two versions: Enterprise Edition, designed for use on internal corporate networks, and Carrier Edition, designed for use by mobile operators.

  Mobile Information Server 2001 supports building applications for wireless devices

• Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA) 2000: Deploying applications on the Internet commonly raises two serious issues: security and performance. As its name suggests, ISA 2000 addresses both issues for Internet applications. To improve performance, the product provides a proxy service that caches frequently accessed pages near the client. The product also blocks access by inappropriate users and to inappropriate sites by providing a firewall service. This firewall works in both directions: It can block outside access from clients that don't obey its configured rules, while also preventing intranet users from accessing specific sites.

  ISA 2000 provides firewall and proxy services

The .NET Enterprise Servers provide a useful set of services. Organizations building Windows DNA applications today are likely to use at least some of these products. And even though none of them specifically targets .NET Framework applications in their 2000 releases, it's likely that all of them will do so in the not-too-distant future.

The .NET Enterprise Servers can be useful in building various kinds of applications

Why Are the .NET Enterprise Servers Part of .NET?

It's not obvious why the .NET Enterprise Servers are considered part of .NET. Most of the .NET Enterprise Servers were released by the end of 2000, but the .NET Framework wasn't released until more than a year later. Furthermore, the .NET Enterprise Servers are based on Windows DNA technologies: COM, Active Server Pages, and more. Given that they don't require the .NET Framework, why view them as part of .NET?

The problem for Microsoft was that the .NET Enterprise Servers were already well under way by the time .NET was announced. Even though they are built on Windows DNA technology in fact, they were once marketed under the name Windows DNA 2000 marketing people quite sensibly hate to promote a brand, such as Windows DNA, that's being replaced. Since all of the servers shipped after .NET was announced, it made sense from a marketing perspective to give them the .NET brand.

Doing this makes less sense from a technical perspective. It's easy to be confused, thinking that Microsoft's promised big changes with .NET can actually be found in the .NET Enterprise Servers. While this will eventually be true, it's not true today. Also, some customers have assumed that the .NET Enterprise Servers are useful only with applications based on the .NET Framework, which is certainly not correct. While I understand why Microsoft made the branding choice they did in their shoes, I might well have done the same thing the result was substantial confusion among their customers.

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