Application components model the activity of a business. These components implement the business rules, providing views and transformations of the application state. Consider, for example, the case of an online bank. Records in one or more database systems represent the durable state of the business, such as the amount of money in an account. The application components update that state to reflect such changes as debits and credits.
MTS shelters developers from complex server issues, allowing them to focus on implementing business functions. Because components running in the MTS run-time environment can take advantage of transactions, developers can write applications as if they run in isolation. MTS handles the concurrency, resource pooling, security, context management, and other system-level complexities. The transaction system, working in cooperation with database servers and other types of resource managers, ensures that concurrent transactions are atomic, consistent, have proper isolation, and that, once committed, the changes are durable. For more information on the benefits of transactions, see Transactions.
MTS also makes it easier to build distributed applications by providing location transparency. MTS automatically loads the component into a process environment. An MTS component can be loaded into a client application process (in-process component), or into a separate surrogate server process environment, either on the client's computer (local component) or on another computer (remote component).
In-process, local, and remote components
MTS components are COM in-process server components contained in (DLLs). They are distinguished from other COM components in that they execute in the MTS run-time environment. You can create and implement these components with Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual J++, or any ActiveX-compatible development tool.
Note that the term component represents the code that implements a COM object. For example, Visual C++ components are implemented as classes. Likewise, Visual Basic components are implemented by class modules.
MTS imposes specific requirements on components beyond those required by COM (see MTS Component Requirements). This allows MTS to provide services to the component that would not otherwise be possible. These include increased scalability and robustness and simplified system management.
See Also
Base Clients vs. MTS Components, MTS Objects, Business Logic in MTS Components, Server Processes