Microsoft Transaction Server Run-Time Environment

[This product will work only on Windows NT 4.0 versions and earlier. For Windows 2000 and later, see COM+ (Component Services).]

The MTS run-time infrastructure makes application development, deployment, and management easy by providing the application developer and system administrator a comprehensive but easy-to-use set of system services that include:

• Distributed transactions. A transaction is a unit of work that is done as an atomic operation — that is, the operation succeeds or fails as a whole.
• Automatic management of processes and threads.
• Object instance management.
• A distributed security service to control object creation and use.
• A graphical interface for system administration and component management.

Application developers who rely upon these system services to make their applications scalable and robust can focus on solving their business problems rather than on developing a system infrastructure.

MTS works with any application development tool capable of producing ActiveX™ dynamic-link libraries (DLLs). For example, developers can use Microsoft Visual Basic®, Microsoft Visual C++®, Microsoft Visual J++®, or any other ActiveX tool to develop MTS applications.

MTS is designed to work with a wide variety of resource managers, including relational database systems, file systems, and document storage systems. This allows developers and independent software vendors to select from a wide range of resource managers and to easily use two or more resource managers within a single application while enjoying the benefits of local or distributed transactions.

See Also

MTS Overview and Concepts