Tools for Building Collaborative Systems

Microsoft offers a number of products and tools that help developers make use of the technologies in which a company is currently invested and add new functionality to them. These tools fall into three key product types:

• Client products     Microsoft Office, especially Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and MSN Messenger

• Server products     Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS), and the SharePoint family of products

• Development products     Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, which encompasses Microsoft Visual Basic, Microsoft Visual C#, Microsoft Visual C++, and the Microsoft .NET Framework

The two tools you will mainly want to learn about are Outlook and Exchange Server. Both provide a robust infrastructure with which corporations can run mission-critical services. Combine this infrastructure with the rich development capabilities provided by both products and you have a powerful platform on which to build solutions ranging from simple forms to complex applications. Next we'll take a quick look at some of the products and tools available from Microsoft for building collaborative solutions.