COM+: the evolution of component services

Abstract

COM+ encompasses two areas: a fundamental programming architecture for building software components (first defined by the original COM specification) and an integrated suite of component services replete with an associated runtime environment. For many developers, however, the fundamental COM model is insufficient. In the typical corporation, developers build business components that operate as part of a larger application. Developers expend a great deal of effort to build even the simplest of components. They must also create a robust and secure framework for it and ensure that only clients with the proper authorization can perform certain privileged operations using the component. The problem with the bare-bones component model is that developers are left to implement an enormous amount of functionality that has little to do with the goals of the application itself. To reduce the amount of work required to build a complex distributed application, Microsoft developed the Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS), the first Windows-based implementation of a runtime environment to provide component services. These component services operate within a general set of tools and technologies that, together with COM+, form what Microsoft calls the Distributed Internet Applications (DNA) architecture.