Acknowledgments

First, I would like to thank my managers at Microsoft for their support while I was writing this book: James Utzschneider, Dave Cameron, and Hugh Teegan. Thanks also to the people who got stuck with my other responsibilities so that I could focus on writing: Jeff Wickman, Cathy Brennan, Marc Levy, and Jocelyn Garner.

I would also like to thank members of the COM team who helped clarify various aspects of COM, MTS, and COM+: in particular, Marc, Jocelyn, Tracey Trewin, Pat Helland, Robert Barnes, Gerald Hinson, Dick Dievendorff, Scott Robinson, and Markus Horstmann. Tracey Trewin and Sharon Chen, of the Visual Studio team, are responsible for the Island Hopper sample application used in this book, and I thank them both for developing the sample and taking the time to explain why certain things were done the way they were. Robert and his team developed the MTS Performance toolkit upon which Chapter 13, "Performance Validation," is based. Bob Beauchemin and Shaun McAravey of STEP Technologies developed the MTS training course that provided the original idea and outline for this book. Gary Voth, Charlie Kindel, Peter Houston, Angela Mills, David Lazar, and Kamaljit Bath wrote the white papers I used to learn about technologies outside my primary area of knowledge.

A number of people waded through early drafts of the book and provided valuable feedback that made it better. They include Jocelyn Garner, Vincent Sacksteder, Mike McKeown, Ralph Squillace, Tim Ewald, Bryan Lamos, Mario Benuzzi, Chris Sells, Govind Kanshi, Paul Stafford, and Mario Raccagni. (If I missed anyone, I apologize. Your comments must have joined the great e-mail inbox in the sky when I accidentally deleted my e-mail archive…) Special thanks to David Chappell, whose words of encouragement arrived on a day when I'd convinced myself everything I'd written was utter garbage.

And, finally, thanks to everyone at Microsoft Press who put up with me and helped turn my ramblings into a real book: Eric Stroo, Wendy Zucker, Jennifer Harris, Jack Beaudry, and all the others whose behind-the-scenes efforts are greatly appreciated.

Mary Kirtland