Tools for Building Collaborative Systems

Microsoft offers a number of products and tools that are designed to help you leverage a company's current technology investments and extend them with new functionality. These tools, which fall under three key product types, are listed here:

• Client products. Tools include Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Internet Explorer.
• Server products. Tools include Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Internet Information Services and Microsoft Site Server.
• Development products. Tools include Microsoft Visual Studio, which encompasses Microsoft Visual Basic and Microsoft Visual InterDev.

The two main tools you will want to learn are Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Server. Both provide a robust infrastructure with which corporations can run mission critical services. Combine this infrastructure with the rich development tools provided by both products and you have a powerful platform on which you can write solutions. The type and complexity of these solutions can range from simple forms to complex applications. The next few sections briefly describe some products and tools available from Microsoft for building collaborative solutions.

Microsoft Outlook

Outlook supports the ability to manage information (e-mail messages, appointments, contacts, and tasks) and share it throughout an organization. Outlook also includes a development environment that allows you to write collaborative applications quickly. Part II of this book is dedicated to Outlook and its development environment. Chapters 9 and 10 in particular discuss and illustrate the features of Outlook 2000 that will enable you to further extend Outlook.

Microsoft Internet Explorer

With the ubiquity of the Internet, browser technology is becoming increasingly important for user collaboration. Internet Explorer, with its support for dynamic HTML, scripting, and security, is an ideal client interface for your applications. In Chapters 11, 12, and 13, you will see how to take advantage of Internet Explorer using both Outlook and Exchange Server.

Microsoft Exchange Server

Exchange Server, which is part of the Microsoft BackOffice suite of products, is a linchpin for any collaborative system because it supports communication, information sharing, and workflow services that use Internet standards and protocols. Chapter 3 of this book provides an introduction to Exchange Server.

Microsoft SQL Server

SQL Server is a relational database system that offers easy storage and retrieval of relational information. Its built-in data replication, powerful management tools, Internet integration, and open system architecture allow you to integrate SQL Server into existing environments cost-effectively.

Microsoft Internet Information Server

Internet Information Server is a free web server available for Microsoft Windows NT Server. It provides an easy way to publish and share information securely over corporate intranets and the Internet through HTML documents. The power of IIS is demonstrated when web applications are written using its built-in server-side script technology called Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP). ASP allows developers to write applications by using any ActiveX scripting language, such as JScript and Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript). These scripts execute on IIS and can access different data such as that provided by Exchange Server or SQL Server. The information returned from the server-side script is in HTML, making these applications compatible with any standard HTML web browser such as Internet Explorer. Chapter 8 introduces Active Server Pages and its programming model.

Microsoft Site Server

Site Server is a web publishing, analysis, and search tool. Because Site Server is integrated with Windows NT Server and IIS, you can easily set up and deploy intranets. Site Server helps corporations get the most from their intranets by implementing best practices for publishing and staging intranet content.

Site Server can also implement content tagging. Content tagging is a structured, site vocabulary that authors use to classify the web content they create. When used in conjunction with Site Server's integrated search and knowledge management capabilities, these tags enable users to more easily find information. Plus, Site Server integrates and manages the information from other BackOffice products through full-text indexing of these different data sources.

Microsoft Visual Studio

Visual Studio is an integrated and comprehensive suite of development tools for building web-based or Microsoft Windows_based applications. You can quickly build collaborative solutions that take advantage of the BackOffice family of products because Visual Studio and BackOffice are integrated. Throughout this book, you will see examples of collaborative solutions that use Visual Studio tools.

Microsoft Visual Basic

Visual Basic is an effective and easy-to-use tool for creating high-performance windows applications. It includes a rapid development environment with graphical layout tools and great performance because of native code compilation. Visual Basic also creates open, industry-standard ActiveX components. These components can provide functionality to other applications whether they are web-based or Windows-based.

Microsoft Visual InterDev

Visual InterDev empowers web application developers to rapidly build fully interactive, dynamic web sites. With visual development features and powerful database tools, Visual InterDev provides the most complete and technically advanced development system for building both intranet and Internet applications. Through the use of Visual InterDev Design-time controls and wizards, you can add collaborative technologies to your web applications.