John,

I'd never been to one of these presentations, and I've never used COM, MTS, ASP, InterDev or any of those tools, so I went to the presentations as a way to expand my horizons. They didn't lose me until about mid-afternoon deep into COM+ territory, so I guess Geoff White did well.

Geoff started his life at Fox software, so when he heard that some VFP people were present he included FoxPro in statements like "You can write this part in VC++, VB, or VFP." I still think its silly that they position VFP as the "ideal" platform for COM, yet the demo is given in VB. But of course the VB folks wouldn't be able to follow a presentation in VFP! I didn't press the issue either.

Also, you can't put VFP code in the ASP pages, so you get a choice of writing a little VB script or using West-wind.

What I retained: A general idea of what can be done in Windows DNA, so if I ever do it I know the technology is there. Also, that MTS is now part of COM+ and there are choices to be made between "just-in-time" instantiation or keeping instantiated components ready at all times. Also, that MSMQ takes care of a lot of the details and that you can schedule things to run after hours.

Geoff had made a little "clipboard on steroids" for himself so he could paste the same pieces of code into the different platforms. It had a drop-down box with his list of code blocks and was in always-on-top mode. Looked like a nice little tool. In VFP we could use the component gallery, but you would have to copy/paste code into InterDev or whatever. Good trick for those who do cross-platform work.




>Care to write a review of your opinion on the presentations?
>
>>I went to two MSFT presentations recently:
>>
>>Step by Step Windows DNA on Windows 2000
>>
>>(excerpt)
>>How Microsoft Tools and Technologies Fit Together to Build Distributed, Web-Enabled Applications on Windows 2000
>>Introductory Techniques and Best Practices for Building These Applications
>>A Simple, Step-By-Step Demonstration of Building a Windows DNA Application
>>
>>Hitchiker's Guide to COM+ Part 1
>>
>>(excerpt)
>>COM+ Overview: COM+ Is:
>>A Runtime Environment for Components
>>The Evolution of COM and MTS Combined into a Single Programming Model, Shipping in Windows 2000
>>The Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC)
>>An Administration Tool
>>System Services for Distributed Applications
>>Data Access, Scripting, Transactions, etc.
>>
>>COM+ Overview: COM + MTS + Services = COM+
>>COM+ Preserves Current COM and MTS Investments
>>COM+ is based on COM
>>COM+ embraces and extends MTS services
>>COM+ Makes Building Server-Side Components Easy
>>COM+ Provides Benefits Across Multiple Languages and Tools
>>
>>The PowerPoint slides can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/southeast/business/files.htm if anyone is interested.