Next-Generation Internet: Microsoft .NET Enterprise Servers and Windows 2000
By Darcy Gibbons Burner (Issue 3 2000)
Microsoft .NET Enterprise Servers are a comprehensive family of server applications for building, deploying, and managing scalable, integrated Web solutions with fast time-to-market. Using .NET Enterprise Servers, companies can cost-effectively and efficiently integrate Web solutions such as e-commerce, supply chain management, purchasing, business-to-business, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) into their enterprises.
Microsoft .NET Enterprise Servers help organizations to integrate, manage, and Web-enable the enterprise—fast. This is the first product delivered from Microsoft within the .NET vision, which will enable highly interconnected distributed computing over the Internet.
The Microsoft platform can help customers get their enterprise Web solutions to market very quickly. The .NET Enterprise Servers family of products has the key elements for success in the time-to-market equation.
The .NET Enterprise Servers
The .NET Enterprise Servers are a comprehensive family of server applications for quickly building and managing an integrated, Web-enabled enterprise. Microsoft built the applications from the ground up for interoperability using today's Web standards, with built-in support for XML to attain the highest levels of integration and interoperability. .NET Enterprise Servers are production-ready, out-of-the-box applications. The core .NET Enterprise Servers include:
- Application Center 2000
- BizTalk Server 2000
- SQL Server 2000
- Commerce Server 2000
- Exchange 2000 Server
- Host Integration Server 2000
- Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2000
- Mobile Information 2001 Server
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Scaling Up and Scaling Out
The Windows 2000 Server family and the .NET Enterprise Servers support scalability by adding software scaling—scaling out—to the traditional hardware scaling—scaling up—paradigm. Scaling out uses software to balance loads across multiple machines in server clusters for each tier of an application.
- Network Load Balancing (NLB): Provides load-balance access to the application by grouping Web servers. Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Windows 2000 Datacenter Server scale out by distributing incoming Internet Protocol (IP) traffic across a farm of load-balanced servers, with incrementally expanded capacity by adding servers to the farm using NLB.
- Component Load Balancing (CLB): Dynamically load-balances the business logic across a cluster of application servers. Application Center 2000 supplements the NLB support in Windows 2000 by supporting CLB and centralized management for both kinds of scaling out.
- Microsoft Clustering Services (MSCS): Eliminates a single point of failure by creating a single logical database from two distinct servers, thereby providing hardware redundancy and failover capability. SQL Server 2000 completes the scenario through MSCS, which enables the creation of a single database across multiple servers.
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These technologies for scaling out are combined with Windows 2000 Datacenter Server's support for up to 32 processors and 64 GB of memory, offering a complete scaling solution for the enterprise.
Database Scalability Enhances Applications
The performance of SQL Server 20001 has demonstrated its scalability in several independent tests:
- JD Edwards® OneWorld® Concurrent Users' Benchmark
- SAP R/3 SD Benchmarks
- SAP R/3 Retail Benchmark
- PeopleSoft® HRMS Benchmark
- PeopleSoft Financials Benchmark
- TPC-C record for a single symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) server
- All of the top 45 positions in the TPC-C price performance category
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SQL Server 2000 supports distributed partitioned views, which provide e-commerce customers with unlimited scalability by dividing the workload across multiple independent SQL Server-based servers. It also supports materialized views in the SQL Server 2000 relational engine to improve the performance of complex queries in very large database environments.
Availability and Reliability
The key to Web site availability is a successful architecture that keeps the entire application running if a single system fails. Optimum availability has two components: reliable individual machines that can recover from failures, and the elimination of any single point of failure. .NET Enterprise Servers that run on Windows 2000 Server address both issues.
The Windows 2000 enhancements—such as auto-restart of system services, Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM), and system file protection—emphasize reliability on a single machine. Additionally, the same clustering services that enhance scalability also increase availability of the entire system by eliminating any single point of failure.
Queuing and Events Support Enhances Availability
.NET Enterprise Servers support queuing technologies and loosely coupled events. COM+ Queued Components provide an easy way to invoke and execute components asynchronously. The availability or accessibility of the sender or receiver does not affect processing. A home shopping network, for example, might benefit from asynchronous processing; that is, viewers phone in to several operators, orders are taken en masse, and they are then queued for later retrieval and processing by the server.
COM+ Events is a loosely coupled events system that stores event information from different publishers within an event store in the COM+ catalog. Subscribers query this store and select the events for which they want information, which results in a subscription.
When an event occurs, the event system checks this database to find the interested subscribers, creates a new object for each interested class, and calls a method on that object. The COM+ Events design avoids the disadvantages of tightly coupled events (TCE), such as polling, the need for both publisher and subscriber to be running at all times, divergent callback mechanisms, and the inability to filter or intercept an event.
Manageability
Microsoft Application Center 2000 enhances manageability of applications by providing a unified interface for managing server farms using both NLB and CLB, and by automatically propagating application changes across all servers in a cluster.
Security
.NET Enterprise Servers provide access to the major security technologies in Windows 2000 Server, including 56-bit and 128-bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TLS), IPSec, Server gated cryptography, Digest authentication, Kerberos 5 authentication, and Fortezza.
The Certificate Server in Internet Information Server 5.0 is a critical part of a public key infrastructure (PKI) that allows customers to issue their own x.509 certificates to their users for PKI functionality, such as certificate-based authentication, IPSec, and secure electronic mail. Integration with Active Directory greatly simplifies the process of user enrollment for administrators.
Data Access and Integration
.NET Enterprise Servers can help developers leverage investments in hardware, software, training, and resources and build upon their existing systems. It addresses four general types of interoperability: data access and integration; host integration; application integration; and network and security integration.
Accessing Data Throughout the Enterprise
Microsoft uses COM components to provide one consistent programming model for access to any type of data, regardless of where that data may be found in the enterprise. These components are both tool- and language-independent. They include the following:
- OLE DB: Microsoft's low-level interface to data across the organization which builds on the success of open database connectivity (ODBC) by providing an open standard for accessing all kinds of data
- ODBC: The widely used interface for accessing structured data in more than 50 different databases, including Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase®, Informix®, and DB2®
- ActiveX® Data Objects (ADO): A language-neutral object model that exposes data raised by an underlying OLE DB provider
- Remote Data Service (RDS): Used to transport ADO object record sets from a server to a client computer to provide a low-overhead, high-performance way to marshal record-set data over a network or the Web
- Collaboration Data Objects (CDO): A set of COM objects that provide access to data stored in Microsoft Exchange
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XML Facilitates Data Exchange
XML is a meta markup language whose structural representation of data is easy to implement and deploy. It provides interoperability through a flexible, open, standards-based format that offers new ways to access legacy databases and deliver data to Web clients. Applications using XML are built more quickly, easier to maintain, and easily provide multiple views of the structured data.
.NET Enterprise Servers include integrated, high-performance XML support for easy data exchange between disparate businesses and enterprise systems. In addition, Microsoft Windows 2000 Server has a high-performance XML parser, support for XML streaming and persistence, XML record-set translation, and support for building XML data islands in Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Host Integration —Critical to Interoperability
Microsoft Host Integration Server 2000 helps solve the problem of integrating the Windows platform with other non-Windows enterprise systems running on hosts such as IBM® mainframes and AS/400® systems.
The bidirectional integration services of Host Integration Server 2000 free developers from platform boundaries and allow them to build highly scalable, distributed applications that incorporate existing processes and data without recoding or "wrapping" existing code.
Components and Transactions —Available and Reusable
COM Transaction Integrator (COMTI) uses a component builder within Host Integration Server 2000. COMTI enables CICS® and Information Management System (IMS) transaction programs to be accessed as Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) or COM+ components. As COM+ components, these objects are available and reusable by many COM-compliant development tools. COMTI also allows CICS transactions to initiate MTS transactions.
Host Integration Server 2000 Component Builder provides developers with a graphical, drag-and-drop environment for encapsulating existing business logic. It automatically generates the appropriate COM interfaces.
Integrating Applications Enables Document Exchange
Microsoft BizTalk Server 2000 enables document exchange among applications within an organization and across various platforms and operating systems. It also provides a standard gateway for sending and receiving documents via the Internet with external trading partners.
Network and Security Integration Services
The network and security integration services within Host Integration Server 2000 support Systems Network Architecture (SNA) and LAN protocols, application programming interfaces (APIs), and integrated security for password synchronization and single sign-on. It also supports the Active Directory services in Windows 2000 Server.
Productivity
Companies can use Microsoft technologies and the .NET Enterprise Servers to create an outstanding productive environment for developing enterprise Web applications. Microsoft tools and developer programs enable rapid application development and ensure high productivity for building distributed Web applications.
Integrated Commerce Capabilities
The .NET Enterprise Servers family provides a full set of commerce capabilities to simplify the process of building sophisticated, customer-centric Internet and extranet selling sites. Business managers can use Commerce Server 2000 to better understand their customers, how those customers interface with their site, and how to best reach existing customers as well as attract new customers.
Some real-time marketing capabilities enabled through Commerce Server 2000 include a high-performance personalization and targeting system, advanced catalog management, and sophisticated business analysis with online analytical processing (OLAP) services.
Commerce Server 2000's partners include domain experts who are building and delivering horizontal and vertical industry-specific applications that provide special functionality (such as international tax calculations, product configuration, or shipping rates) or assist with integration (such as interfaces with popular ERP packages). The range of these solutions includes payment, tax, shipping, logistics, procurement, accounting, customer management, ERP, and EDI.
Productivity-Enhancing Technologies
Windows 2000 Server provides a wide range of tools and technologies designed to make developers more productive when creating applications for .NET Enterprise Servers. Active Server Pages allow developers to combine HyperText Markup Language (HTML) pages, script commands, and COM components to create interactive Web pages and Web-based applications that are easy to deploy and modify.
Windows 2000 COM+ Services, an extension to COM, builds on the COM integrated services and features. This makes it easier for developers to create and use software components in any language, using any tool.
Windows 2000 Transaction Services work with COM+ to make it easier to develop and deploy server-centric applications by offering comprehensive component functionality such as automatic transaction support for data-integrity protection; simple role-based security; and access to popular databases, message queuing products, and mainframe-based applications.
Adaptability
The .NET Enterprise Servers are the first Microsoft deliverable on the .NET vision, which will enable highly interconnected distributed computing over the Internet. .NET will enable computing to move beyond today's world of stand-alone Web sites to an Internet of interchangeable components where devices and services can be assembled into cohesive, user-driven experiences.
The Next-Generation Internet
.NET Enterprise Servers are a comprehensive family of server applications for building, deploying, and managing scalable, integrated Web solutions with fast time-to-market. .NET Enterprise Servers support interoperability, productivity, scalability, availability and reliability, manageability, security, price performance, and adaptability. This new family of applications offers the building blocks for the next-generation Internet.
Darcy Gibbons Burner (dburner@microsoft.com) is a marketing manager in Microsoft's eCommerce marketing organization. She has worked on development environments for a wide variety of operating systems and programming languages at companies such as CenterLine® Software, Lotus® Development, and Asymetrix®, where she has been a system administrator, developer, trainer, and product manager. Darcy has a B.A. in Computer Science from Harvard University.
