Conclusion

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COM+ Component Services is the new version of MTS. Nothing has been lost in the transfer from MTS to COM+, and a lot has been gained. COM+ supports everything that was available in MTS, so code written for MTS runs unmodified in COM+ as well. New applications not meant to support MTS but only COM+ don't need some of the code needed for MTS applications—especially everything that concerned context and context objects that had to be managed separately by MTS because "old" COM didn't understand these concepts. COM+ understands them well.

So increased simplicity is one of the things COM+ offers, but moving from MTS to COM+ has more than simplicity to offer. COM+ also offers higher speed. Before COM+, computer vendors such as Compaq, Dell, and Unisys didn't use Microsoft technologies to maximize the workload sent to SQL Server in benchmark testing; most of them used BEA's Tuxedo instead of MTS. Now they don't—they use COM+ for their benchmark testing. And the results have been absolutely grand. Going from Tuxedo to COM+, from SQL Server 6.5 to SQL Server 7.0, and from four processors to eight has more than doubled performance. You can verify that for yourself by visiting Transaction Processing Council's Web site to see the details of such a benchmark test. For example, visit http://www.tpc.org/new_result/c-result1.idc?id=99112201 to see Dell's benchmark test of November 22, 1999, using SQL Server and COM+ and achieving 40,168.50 transactions per minute. This test instance, by the way, has the price/performance record for all categories at the astoundingly low cost of US$14.86 per transaction/minute. Compare this test with the second-best price/performance achievement, which you'll find at http://www.tpc.org/new_result/c-result1.idc?id=99050701. This test, performed by Compaq, features Microsoft SQL Server and BEA's Tuxedo and achieves 20,195.50 transactions per minute at the very low cost of US$15.11 per transaction/minute. It's interesting to notice how the COM+ test doubles the performance of the Tuxedo test at a lower price/performance. Although the Compaq test does use four processors only, whereas the Dell test uses eight, it's still interesting to see how Dell, using COM+ as a transaction monitor, manages to get so much out of the four extra processors.

And there's much more than just simplicity and raw performance to gain from the use of COM+. Features such as queued components, loosely coupled events, and the Compensating Resource Manager, which we talked about in Chapter 15, make new solutions to old problems available. Other new features, built on COM+, are in the pipeline. During this year, the first of the new millennium, we'll see products such as Commerce Server 2000, BizTalk Server 2000, Host Integration Server 2000, and SQL Server 2000. All of them build on Windows 2000 and COM+, and all of them will help make the COM+ environment stronger and more flexible.

To complete the tally, soon there's also Microsoft Application Center 2000 (which seems to be the name chosen for the AppCenter Server), which comes with dynamic component load balancing. Application Center 2000 isn't for everyone, but it will help those organizations that really need it to build, monitor, and maintain a huge computing environment.