TechEd 99 - US coverage

TechEd 99 Stateside

Paul Maritz, group vice president of Microsoft's Developer Group. June 10 - The American version of TechEd 99, held in Dallas during May and attended by over 13,000 delegates, brought few surprises with Windows DNA providing the focus for the keynote speech from Paul Maritz, group vice president of Microsoft's Developer Group. Maritz used his talk to detail three new components of the Windows DNA architecture: the Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE), component-oriented services that will come with Windows 2000, and an integrated set of interoperability services code-named 'Babylon'.
      MSDE is an SQL Server compatible data engine with a free run-time, enabling developers to produce and distribute applications compatible with SQL Server. Further, its support for merge replication allows an MSDE application to be synchronised with an SQL Server database. MSDE will be included with Visual Studio 6 and Office 2000 Developer.
      The latest generation of component services, announced by Maritz, are intended to make it easier to write DNA style applications.
      " Windows 2000 comes with a new in-memory database architecture that makes it very efficient to manipulate data and run queries in memory. There's additional load balancing services for components, queued invocation, and an event model that allows you to hook components together more easily ", outlined Maritz.
      These services are included in beta 3 of Windows 2000, which was distributed at the conference, and delegates were urged to make themselves familiar with the new capabilities.
      Completing the announcements relating to Windows DNA, Maritz described the new integrated set of interoperability services which will be released in beta form later in the year: "The idea is to have available as a service the ability to transform any protocol to any protocol, any data source to any data source, any component architecture to any component architecture, and do it bi-directionally."
      In any discussion of Windows DNA, scalability is usually close to the top of the agenda. TechEd 99 was no exception. Not content with simply describing the results, Maritz attempted to replicate a demonstration of scalability live on stage. The test revealed a three-tier application, using business components written in Visual Basic, capable of handling 5,000 simulated Internet users - equivalent to over 80 million hits a day.
      For those not content with the demonstration there was the opportunity to gain hands-on experience at the Windows DNA lab, where delegates could examine and experiment with DNA applications. Other sessions covered the construction of a sample Windows DNA application.
      Moving on, Maritz discussed what he saw as an emerging 'third generation' Internet architecture, where Web servers begin exchanging information directly with each other without using HTML. Key to this architecture, in Microsoft's view, is XML.
      "This is one of those classic, simple Internet standards that is emerging. It's very simple conceptually, and has very powerful implications. We believe it is going to revolutionise the usage of the Web and drive application integration and the more advanced forms of e-commerce", commented Maritz. "It's hard to overstate the importance of this standard." We will be covering XML in more detail in our July/August issue (which delegates will find in their delegate bags).
      By contrast, the keynote on day two studiously avoided the subject of Windows DNA. Instead Bob Muglia, senior vice president of Microsoft's Business Productivity Group, concentrated on the concept of knowledge workers, and took the opportunity to unveil some new products and technologies.
      Among these were 'Grizzly', code-name of a tool for adding workflow capabilities to applications built with future versions of Office 2000 Developer; and enhancements to the next version of Exchange. The latter, referred to as Exchange Platinum, was described as "a very, very architectural release."
      "One of the key things that we'll be moving to is virtual server support in multi-node clustering, so that you can have multiple databases on different servers, and have those servers fully active, and have fail-over capability with full transaction logging", Muglia revealed.

Exchange goes Platinum
Exchange Platinum proved the "hottest stuff" of the whole event in the opinion of Peet Morris, technical director of TMS and editorial adviser to DNJ. "It's an order of magnitude beyond Exchange Server", he commented. However he cautions, "Platinum will initially be for early adopters only because it requires not just a service pack but a whole new operating system in Windows 2000 Server, and a whole replacement to Exchange - two massive upgrades. Ask yourselves, would you 'do the necessary' to your corporate mail server?"
Peet was also impressed to find Blondie performing live at one of the TechEd parties. Some 17,000 delegates are apparently expected for TechEd 2000, scheduled for Orlando next year.
We'll be providing full coverage of TechEd Europe in the Sept/Oct issue of DNJ and live on this Web site as it happens. If you're at TechEd Europe, we look forward to seeing you there! Come and see us at stand C16 in the Exhibition Hall.

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