Friday, May 30, 2003

.NET Enterprise Services and COM 1.5 Architecture

.NET Enterprise Services and COM 1.5 Architecture "With the release of the Microsoft® .NET Framework and its auto-everything, attribute-based programming model, this confusion has been further fueled. Developers and architects are asking questions similar to those asked when Microsoft® ActiveX® suddenly appeared a few years back and clashed with OLE and COM. There is an initial common misunderstanding among the relationship between COM+ and Microsoft .NET: How does .NET fit into COM+? Does it replace COM+? Do I even need COM+ anymore?
Well, you can relax. All the features and services that COM+ provides are available to you in the .NET Framework. The .NET Framework does not replace COM+, for it is dependent upon COM+ for all its middle-tier component services. The .NET Framework provides an environment for managed code to make use of COM+—as well as other enterprise service technologies like Microsoft® Internet Information Services (IIS) and Microsoft® Message Queue server (MSMQ)—more easily than could be done in the past.
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COM+ 1.5 takes Microsoft's enterprise component architecture to the next level. Scalability is improved through application pooling and the ability to adjust the transactional isolation level for database operations. For system administrators, the ability to disable or pause an application for updates or to use the new process dump feature increases manageability. The capability to recycle an application based upon predefined triggers, and limit activations in dangerously low-memory situations with memory gates, increases an application's' availability. Web services and Services Without Components add powerful functionality to client code that otherwise may not be able to use component services. Component aliasing, along with the ability to mark components as either private or public, maximizes application architecture possibilities. More control over process initialization adds better resource management.
You are not required to use the .NET Framework and managed code to take advantage of COM+. But .NET Enterprise Services namespace makes access to component services a lot easier on either Windows 2000 and COM+ 1.0 or Windows XP/Windows Server 2003 and COM+ 1.5. You can install unmanaged and managed components into COM+ 1.5. Again, note that any .NET class requires a strong name to be installed in the CSE as well as into the GAC."

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