What About COM and XML?

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When the 1999 report was published, COM+ was just a promise. XML was more than a promise, but tools helping the developer create XML-based solutions were scarce.

Our decision at that time was to postpone discussions of COM+ and XML to a later occasion. That occasion presented itself when Microsoft Press made a contract with us to write the book you are now reading.

The question was, should we continue to support the "old" environment with MTS and ADO, or should we focus entirely on new things like COM+ and XML? Discussing it with Microsoft Press, we came to the following decisions:

• When the book comes to bookstores, Windows 2000 with COM+ and a much better support for the XML developer will probably be fully available. Early adopters of the new environment will definitely need architectural guidance, and this book should absolutely do its best to help with that.
• Not every developer, however, will be an early adopter of Windows 2000. Many will build applications for Windows NT 4.0 and MTS for a while, even if new development systems and the new operating system are available in the marketplace. Those developers should also have architectural guidance. In a way, they need more of it because COM+ has simplified things that were demanding in MTS. Furthermore, their applications need to work well in an MTS environment and be designed to easily migrate to COM+ to take advantage of the new things not available in MTS and Windows NT 4.0.

So the decision was easy. We should keep the focus mainly on development for Windows 2000 and COM+ without deserting any developers for Windows NT 4.0 and MTS. We should give examples of data transport using disconnected ADO recordsets as well as examples using XML. So we would give early as well as late adopters of Windows 2000 architectural guidance.