Developing for the Enterprise

Not very long ago, large-scale mission-critical enterprise applications were the exclusive province of massive mainframe computers. That's changing rapidly.

Today, increasingly large and complex systems are being built as distributed, component-based applications. A new generation of development tools and system services provide reliable support for complex transaction-based commerce systems that can be distributed across network servers and scaled to support massive numbers of users with the simple addition of inexpensive hardware.

The Enterprise Edition of Microsoft^® Visual Studio™ 6.0 is a rich environment for creating such applications. The Visual Studio tools build upon the platform and infrastructure resources of Windows DNA (Distributed interNet Applications Architecture) to give you what you need to build component-based enterprise systems and provide a robust execution context for deploying and maintaining them.

For more information   For more information about enterprise application design using Visual Studio tools, Windows DNA, and other Microsoft resources, the Microsoft Web site — at http://www.microsoft.com — has a wealth of technical and tutorial information, as well as detailed industry case studies. Search for "Enterprise Architecture," or the particular subject you want more information about. A good starting point for enterprise application case studies and design information is http://www.microsoft.com/industry/ie40.htm.

This book includes the following sections.