November 1998
If it's possible to identify a single theme out of a four-day conference with more than 130 technical sessions, half a dozen keynote presentations, and 6,000 attendees, the theme at the 1998 Professional Developers Conference had to be multitier applications. Specifically, how to build multitier, distributed Windows DNA-style applications using Windows NT 5.0 as an application development platform.
From Bill Gates on down the line, virtually every Microsoft official who spoke at this year's PDC (October 12 to 15, 1998) plugged the advantages of breaking applications into three distinct tiers: a UI or presentation layer, a middle layer containing the business logic, and a data access layer.
They demonstrated a host of tools and technologies now available in Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 and coming in Windows NT 5.0 that will simplify the often complex process of building n-tier applications. They also previewed several new features and technologies coming in the next version of Visual Studio that promise to further ease the process.
First COM+ Tool ReleasedA big part of this promise of simplified multitier development depends on Microsoft delivering COM+ with Windows NT 5.0, as well as new tools to build COM+ components. COM+ will provide many of the system-level services developers must write code for today, especially when developing Windows DNA-style applications.
At the PDC, Microsoft tools VP Paul Gross announced that the next version of Visual Studio, code-named Rainier, is scheduled to ship within 60 days of Windows NT 5.0. One of the main purposes of the new tools suite will be to support COM+ and other new technologies arriving next year in Windows NT 5.0, he said.
To provide PDC attendees with a head start building COM+ components, Microsoft gave them all an add-on to Visual C++ 6.0 called the Visual C++ Technology Preview. The pre-beta software upgrades the compiler in Visual C++ to allow developers to move their existing COM components forward to COM+ without requiring them to write any new code. The Visual C++ add-on also features a new technology called Attributes, which lets developers build new COM+ components from scratch.
Dramatic Storage ImprovementsCOM+ wasn't the only "+" initiative highlighted at the PDC. Microsoft VP David Vaskevitch, who heads the company's Distributed Application Platform Division, discussed another important new technology called Storage+.
Storage+ is Microsoft's long-range initiative to unify its storage technologies, eventually creating a single storage engine able to store and search for everything from Office documents and mail messages to objects such as music clips and digital photos. Like COM+, Storage+ will introduce another set of high-level services that should make it easier for developers to write distributed, n-tier applications.
Vaskevitch predicted that the biggest computing innovations of the next few years will occur in storage technologies. The most significant improvements won't come in raw storage capacity, he said, but in figuring out how to better store, organize, and retrieve random pieces of data scattered across most users' hard disks.
For now, Microsoft will focus on improving raw storage capacity with the release of SQL Server 7.0, which should be scalable enough to meet the storage needs of all but a handful of very high-end users, Vaskevitch said.
For more details about building Windows DNA apps, the Visual C++ Tech Preview, and other PDC news, see MSDN's online coverage of the conference (http://msdn.microsoft.com/developer/news/feature/pdc98/default.htm).