.NET Enterprise Server Essentials
.NET Enterprise Servers provide crucial enterprise abilities for both broad and specific applications. But where are they on delivering the .NET vision?
by Rockford Lhotka

Microsoft .NET isn’t easy to understand or define, but here’s a structure that can help. You can look at .NET as three things: a new programming environment or platform that replaces COM, a set of back-office servers that support the platform, and an overarching architectural vision that supersedes Windows DNA. These elements can help you understand what .NET is about and where Microsoft is going with it. In this column, I’ll explore the .NET Enterprise Servers.

.NET is guided by an overarching and long-term vision of software as a service. This vision describes how software should be designed, developed, and deployed. It’s a combination of Web technologies and standards, intelligent client technologies, and traditional client/server, all tied together with XML. The .NET vision shows you a world where your personal and corporate information is available at any time, from any place, in a secure yet open format.

Microsoft’s .NET Framework—the programming platform—includes the .NET runtime, the .NET SDK, and Visual Studio .NET. This powerful new programming environment replaces COM and Distributed COM (DCOM), while carrying forward the concepts and design principles that made COM so powerful.

Finally, .NET incorporates the .NET Enterprise Servers, including Application Center 2000, Commerce Server 2000, Host Integration Server 2000, Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2000, Mobile Information Server, SharePoint Portal Server, BizTalk Server 2000, SQL Server 2000, and Exchange Server 2000. These servers support the .NET Framework, providing powerful back-office services on which you can build and run your .NET applications. These servers are equally part of the existing world of Windows, COM, and Windows Distributed interNet Applications (DNA) (see Figure 1).

Before .NET, there was Windows DNA, the Microsoft architecture that guided the growth of Windows development over the past several years. If you’ve built applications using Active Server Pages (ASP), COM, DCOM, Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS), or COM+, then you’ve been working with Windows DNA.

The .NET Enterprise Servers are integrated tightly with the Windows and COM world, and they provide enhanced performance and capabilities for existing Windows DNA applications and architectures. At the same time, the .NET Enterprise Servers are XML-enabled, so they also provide a comprehensive set of services to use when building applications on the new .NET Framework.