Re: Com+ and Financial Transactions

[Steve Cohen <stevecoh@mcs.com>]

Has ActiveX now been declared defunct?  I hadn't heard that one.  Wouldn't surprise me
though.  It never meant anything, anyway,

Jeff Wasel wrote:

> Hi Charles and the list!
>
> COM+ is the third, maybe even 4th attempt to package OLE and the now
> defunct Active X into a supposedly "open" distributed architecture or
> Common Object Model that facilitates distributed processing accross
> disparate platforms. It's a myth. Microsoft has enlisted the leader
> Object Request Broker developer, IONA Technologies, to partner with in
> creating a bridge between COM and CORBA. Note: a "bridge" not an
> integration; it's more a marketing exercise to legimize M$ as a player.
> CORBA is a truly open standard developed by concensus (The Object
> Management Group OMG- www.omg.org) and owned by no one. It is the
> antithesis of the Microsoft model. In selling into the CORBA market,
> none of the sophisticated shops I work with even think about COM or COM+
> as it is tired, rehashed technology that is still proprietary, and has
> no true connectivity accross UNIX, 2 and 3-tier architectures and the
> windows world. CORBA is the best hope at the grail of platform
> independence, and COM is but another attempt by M$ to co-op and corrupt
> a relatively benign, developer-owned design paradigm.
>
> One great sigh of relief is that the NT bigots can't touch the true
> scalability of CORBA-based architecture and the ease of deployment the
> strong JAVA connectivity in CORBA 3.0 brings to the table. Full Java
> beans, and JDK compatibility are allowing development of both Clients
> AND Servers now in Java with CORBA back-ends. The mainframe folks love
> CORBA as it gives them a transparent bridge to the traditional client
> server world, regardless if it's a Win 95, OS/2 or other client
> accessesing the host. CORBA is a Gates-buster, and I would imagine much
> of the COM+ f.u.d. feeds on this...
>
> Jeff Wasel
>
> Charles Behney wrote:
> >
> > http://www8.zdnet.com/pcweek/news/0413/13com.html
> >
> > PCWEEK has an effusive piece on COM+ features and Microsoft Transaction
> > Servers. Can anyone fill us non-programmers in on the basics of what COM
> > and these transactions servers represent in the strategic virtual
> > universe of Microsoft? What about the other architectures like CORBA and
> > the javabeans?
> >
> > .............
> > .............
> >
> > > "I'm used to writing procedures, which is what you're taught in C and
> > >               carry forward with C++. [COM+] is different," said Craig Andera, a
> > >               systems programmer at GMAC-RCF, in Bloomington, Minn.
> > >
> > >               "The more you learn, the more you realize that [Microsoft] may have a
> > >               better way," Andera added. "But it will take time to get people to come
> > >               around to look at how this could be easier."
> > >
> > >               Microsoft likely will release the beta of COM+ 1.0 concurrently with
> > >               Windows NT 5.0 Beta 2, which is due by the end of this quarter.
> > >               Microsoft may include a software development kit with the COM+
> > >               beta, sources said.
> > >
> > >               Microsoft plans to provide in-depth previews of both COM+ and NT
> > >               5.0 at its TechEd Developers Conference in New Orleans during the
> > >               first week of June.
> > >
> > >               The Redmond, Wash., company is casting COM+ as a component
> > >               services architecture featuring event, queuing, security and
> > >               load-balancing services, along with an attribute-based programming
> > >               model.
> > >
> > >               All of the services are activated by "interceptors" that monitor
> > >               components and determine what services are required.
> > >
> > .......
> > .......
> >
> > CAB
>
> --