Chapter 1: Introduction to ATL Server

Overview

IT IS APPARENT THAT WEB APPLICATIONS will play a significant role in the future of software. Today s business Web sites must be tightly coupled with a company s other systems, such as databases that track inventory, ordering, and customer and business partner information. All of these business aspects need to be handled in real time over the Web.

In particular, the need for high-end mission-critical Web applications has begun to grow and shows no signs of slowing down. Companies with this need include not only Internet (dot-com) businesses that aim to make money with their Web sites and associated services, but also more traditional businesses that are exposing important internal subsystems on the Web (such as ordering and inventory management) to facilitate more efficient business transactions.

In this chapter we introduce you to the basics of the ATL Server library. You ll learn why you as a developer should choose ATL Server, and you ll examine some of the features that the library provides. You ll also take a look at a high-level overview of the architecture of an ATL Server application.