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This article provides an overview of the concepts involved with implementing a trading partner integration system on BizTalk Server 2000 and details the document interchange server architecture and toolset. Additionally, an early look was taken at some business process integration features planned for the production release of the product that allow easy design, execution and sharing of new business processes with trading partners. The concepts and architecture presented allow companies to prepare internal line-of-business applications and trading partners for systems that improve customer service and reduce operating costs.
When it ships, Windows CE 3.0 is expected to include Web services via the Windows CE Web Server. This new component of the Windows CE operating system will allow developers to share data or monitor and manage devices that are running Windows CE-whether they are handheld PCs or embedded in devices such as gas pumps or refrigerators. This article explains how the Windows CE Web Server component can be included in the operating system for a given device. We'll also show you how the Web server features you're familiar with from Microsoft Internet Information Services are implemented in the Windows CE Web Server.
Like the Internet itself, e-commerce is evolving. Today's e-commerce companies are allowing their customers to plug into existing catalogs and ordering systems, creating new synergistic relationships. Some companies are even adding real-time chat with customer service personnel. This article gives you an overview of some of the new e-commerce concepts and implementations that are helping forge those new relationships with customers, vendors, and shipping companies. The importance of these relationships, as well as the specific technologies used to encourage communication and collaboration are discussed and illustrated with representative code samples.
This article provides an overview of Windows Management Instrumentation, a technology that exposes a wide variety of system and device information through a standard API. With WMI, management information is exposed by following the object oriented structure outlined in the Common Information Model (CIM), which relies on inheritance for reuse and standardization of object classes that represent system devices. This article briefly describes querying WMI for information using a query language much like SQL called Windows Management Instrumentation Query Language (WQL), existing system classes, handling system events, and security in WMI.
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is the Microsoft implementation of Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM), an industry standard for managing computers. WMI exposes system information in accordance with the Common Information Model (CIM), also an industry standard. You need a WMI provider to expose system information to WMI to manage applications and devices. This article offers an in-depth discussion of how to write WMI providers using the WMI provider framework, and how to optimize performance.
Source code control systems like Microsoft Visual SourceSafe can simplify just about any development project, and make it easier for your code to move safely among individual programmers, development teams, and project stages. Visual SourceSafe provides an object model that you can use as the basis of your own customized source code control environment. To give you an idea of what is possible, we'll walk you through the elements of a browser-based source code control system built with Visual SourceSafe, ASP, and VBScript. This simple system lets members of your team build, label, and promote individual files or entire projects, and to reverse promotions.
Web Q&A: Displaying Processing Messages, Accessing File Size and Bandwidth, and Debugging ASP
Windows 2000 is the first version of COM to support asynchronous method calls, which permit clients to make nonblocking calls to COM objects and objects to process incoming calls without blocking the calling threads. COM clients benefit from asynchronous method calls because they can continue working while waiting for outbound calls to return. Objects benefit because they can queue incoming calls and service them from a thread pool. Our SieveClient and SieveServer sample apps demonstrate how to create and use asynchronous clients and servers in COM-based distributed applications.
The plans for the next version of Microsoft Visual Basic include three major improvements: Web Forms, Web services, and object-oriented language enhancements. Web Forms will let veteran Visual Basic users develop Web-based applications as easily as they design standalone apps today. Through a SOAP interface, Web services will let you deploy programmable modules anywhere that can be reached by a URL. In addition, several key object-oriented language enhancements, including inheritance, polymorphism, and overloading, will make Visual Basic code as flexible as C++.
The new Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) technology for Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0, and Windows 98 provides powerful scripting technology that can be used to administrate Windows-based systems. With WMI, you can create scripts to simplify management of devices, user accounts, services, networking, and other aspects of your system. This piece will introduce you to WMI and the WMI Scripting Object Model, taking a look at the available objects, methods, and properties. Along the way, you'll see how these elements can be used to create system management scripts.
Currently MFC and ATL represent two frameworks targeted at different types of Windows-based development. MFC represents a simple and consistent means of creating standalone apps for Windows; ATL provides a framework to implement the boilerplate code necessary to create COM clients and servers. The two frameworks overlap in their usefulness for developing ActiveX controls. We'll take a look at both frameworks as they apply to creating ActiveX controls-highlighting strengths and weaknesses, and walking through the process of creating a control-so you can determine when you might want to use one framework or the other.
Active Accessibility was developed to allow people with disabilities to work on PCs-it's used in magnifiers, screen readers, and tactile mice. It can also be used to create applications that drive other software, and its ability to emulate user input is particularly well suited to the design of testing software. Starting from the basics of Active Accessibility, this article leads you through the development of a software testing application. You'll see how this testing application interacts with common controls and other UI elements, then processes the resulting WinEvents.
Dynamic data-driven pages have become the basis of many cutting-edge Web sites. Early render systems can provide better performance and maintainability for data-driven Web sites by generating frequently accessed pages that contain less-volatile information ahead of time. We'll show you an example of a server-side solution that uses Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) to merge data and layout information into HTML that is compatible with just about any modern Web browser. Using these techniques to render Web pages early can reduce the load on your database back end and increase performance for your users.
Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.0 provides several enhancements to its support for ASP-based Web development, including two new server-side redirection methods: Server.Transfer and Server.Execute. Rather than redirecting requests with a round-trip to the client, these new methods can be used to transfer requests directly to an ASP file without ever leaving the server. While this functionality doesn't replace the Response.Redirect method used by IIS 4.0, you can take advantage of it to implement better application flow control mechanisms and to handle errors more efficiently. The different redirection options are described, along with some tips and tricks for implementing them on your own site.
With XML support in SQL Server 2000, you can query SQL over HTTP with a URL, bring the data down to the browser, and manipulate it on the client machine. By adding Internet Explorer 5.0 to the mix and using XSL to convert the XML to HTML, you can lighten the load on your database server. Going still one step further, by using Vector Markup Language you can even create drawings on the fly using the data from your SQL queries. This article illustrates this combination of technologies by leading you through the creation of a Web app that queries a digitized street map database that's been imported into a SQL Server database, sorts and displays the data using XML, and draws maps using VML.
The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) facilitates interoperability among a wide range of programs and platforms, making existing applications accessible to a broader range of users. SOAP combines the proven Web technology of HTTP with the flexibility and extensibility of XML. This article takes you on a comprehensive tour of Object RPC technology to help you understand the foundations of SOAP and the ways it overcomes many of the limitations of existing technologies, including DCOM and CORBA. This is followed by a detailed treatment of the SOAP encoding rules with a focus on how SOAP maps onto existing ORPC concepts.
Windows 2000 includes some helpful new UI features you can customize and implement in your own applications. In this article you'll see how to provide infotips for files, after making the appropriate registry entries. Then create a custom column handler extension, resulting in a new column for the Explorer's Details view. In order to further extend the shell, additional UI goodies will also be examined and implemented including: search handlers, cleanup handlers, folder customizations using property sheet handlers and icon overlays, and context menu shell extensions. All the code samples are rolled up into a handy package which we've named, by tradition, ShellToys.
Building on the browser-based org chart featuring VML (Vector Markup Language) described previously in Microsoft Internet Developer, this article takes you through the process of refining that sample app by using XML, XSL, and JScript code to create a new, improved version. Drag and drop editing is added to the org chart interface thanks to built-in support found in Internet Explorer 5.0. XML and JScript allow data manipulated on the screen to be saved back to the server in its native format. The final product of this combination of XML, XSL, and VML is a high performance, scalable Internet app that uses processing on the client to reduce stress for the server.
If you've ever needed to build an easy-to-maintain intranet site, here's a solution based on Microsoft Office documents. Many sites require constant updating of their HTML, but the use of Word documents can simplify the process. This article details the construction of a human resources site that exploits the File System Object (FSO), OLE Structured Storage, and ActiveX capabilities of Word documents. This allows the HR staff to copy their revised or newly created Word files to the site, dynamically generate a list of links to their files, and free IS from the constant recoding of HR updates into new HTML pages.