Building Tomorrow's Applications Today with Windows DNA 2000

September 1999

Contents

Windows Distributed interNet Applications Architecture (Windows DNA)
Microsoft Windows DNA 2000
    The Windows DNA 2000 Advantage for Developers
    The Windows DNA 2000 Family
    Windows DNA 2000: The Pieces
Broad Industry Support
Windows DNA in the Real World

Windows Distributed interNet Applications Architecture

The Microsoft® Windows® Distributed interNet Applications Architecture (Windows DNA) provides a blueprint that enables corporate developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) to design and build distributed business applications using technologies that are integral to the Windows platform.

The conceptual model and guidelines designed to help developers make the right choices when creating new software application focuses on how to:

Develop robust, scalable, multi-tier, distributed applications using the Windows platform
Extend existing data and external applications to support the Internet
Support a wide range of client devices, maximizing the reach of applications

Because Windows DNA relies on a comprehensive and integrated set of services provided by the Windows platform, developers are free from the burden of building or assembling the required infrastructure for distributed applications and are able to focus on delivering business solutions.

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Microsoft Windows DNA 2000

Windows DNA 2000, the natural evolution of Windows DNA on Microsoft Windows 2000, is the next generation of software building blocks from Microsoft for developing distributed Web applications. Windows DNA 2000 makes it possible for organizations to build the secure, reliable, highly scalable commerce infrastructure necessary for today’s extremely competitive business environment. Windows DNA 2000 also eases the integration of heterogeneous systems and applications, connecting customers, partners, and suppliers both inside the organization and across the Internet.

Windows DNA 2000:

Enables the development of more sophisticated and scalable solutions. Windows DNA 2000 amplifies the benefits of three-tier, Web-enabled computing by logically separating a distributed application into three partitions or tiers and taking advantage of the latest Windows 2000 technologies. Partitioning an application allows developers to more easily identify and enhance components that effect scalability and makes the application easier to manage and update. Windows DNA 2000 also eases the burden of integrating applications within organizations or across the Internet by using "Babylon" Integration Server.
Reduces time to market. Windows DNA 2000 allows developers to focus on business problems, not systems integration. By tightly integrating many of the common "plumbing" services into the Windows 2000 operating system and providing integration points for the Microsoft® Visual Studio® development system to those services, developers can spend more time on building reusable business logic components and less on underlying maintenance code that is common to and necessary for all applications. This rapid application development ensures the highest productivity possible for building distributed Web applications. In addition, the maturity of COM and the COM-based products that are the foundation of Windows DNA 2000, combined with their popularity in the development community, provide IT managers with a deep talent pool of developers to enhance their existing investments in COM-based products.
Provides greater adaptability. The partitioning of applications into tiers, and the isolation of valuable business logic into components at the appropriate tier, enables code reuse and simplifies the maintenance of applications. This promotes the warehousing of invaluable corporate knowledge in sharable components, while enabling developers to quickly make adjustments and deploy updates in response to competitive market or partner demands. As services are enhanced and the platform is updated, developers can take advantage of the new services while existing application functionality is preserved. This ensures that a long-term investment in the Windows 2000 platform is the right choice.
Lowers costs. Windows DNA 2000 offers a complete set of services that work together. It also leverages most popular hardware and software, so it offers an outstanding cost/performance ratio and a low total cost of ownership. Windows DNA 2000 is an ideal platform for integrating with what you have today and will have tomorrow. There’s no requirement for expensive and time-consuming migration to new technologies; it builds on what developers know today and adds features that developers can leverage for enhanced scalability and reliability.

The Windows DNA 2000 family of solutions takes distributed Web computing to the next level. With Windows 2000 as a cornerstone, this new and updated set of services helps developers move beyond Web sites to "Web services" and facilitates the integration of all applications, whether inside the organization or with trading partners across the Internet.

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The Windows DNA 2000 Advantage for Developers

Windows DNA 2000 provides some key advantages for developers:

Flexible. Provides superior flexibility, enabling developers to rapidly design a complex application and select the most appropriate products and technologies for the design.
Comprehensive. Provides a vast array of highly integrated products, tools, and technologies.
Integrated. The tools, technologies, and products that make up Windows DNA 2000 are highly integrated.
Best of breed. Architects and developers can choose from this best of breed pool of highly reliable, scalable products upon which to build their applications.
Scalable and reliable. Exceeds expectations in terms of building high-performance, reliable, and predictably scalable distributed applications.
Mature. The underlying technologies in Windows DNA 2000 are mature and have been on the market for years.
Pervasive. Experienced developers are the linchpins to success in building today’s distributed line of business applications. Windows DNA 2000 has, by far, the deepest pool of developer talent in the industry due to tremendous adoption and commitment from the community at large.
Interoperable. Includes outstanding enterprise-integration technologies.

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The Windows DNA 2000 Family

Windows DNA 2000 encompasses the next generation infrastructure for building Web applications and promises even faster and easier development, greater interoperability with other Web applications and legacy systems, and simplified deployment and management of Windows DNA solutions. With extensive support for message-oriented interoperability and pervasive, integral XML support, the Windows DNA 2000 family is the ideal solution for managing the transition from today’s Web sites to tomorrow’s "Web services."

Figure 1. The Windows DNA 2000 Solution

The Windows DNA 2000 family of solutions includes:

Microsoft Windows 2000. The core Windows DNA application services, including the Web server, Active Server Pages, transactions, messaging, data access, clustering, and IP load balancing services are now integrated into the operating system for greater consistency, easier management, and faster performance.
Microsoft Visual Studio. The world’s most popular set of development tools, spanning multiple languages. Now including the Windows 2000 Readiness Kit.
Microsoft "Babylon" Integration Server. Provides network, data, and application integration with a variety of legacy hosts.
Microsoft AppCenter. This new product simplifies the deployment and management of Windows DNA applications within "farms" of servers. AppCenter makes it easy to configure and manage high-availability server arrays.
Microsoft® BizTalk™ Server. A new XML-based business-to-business commerce solution, BizTalk Server provides business process integration within the enterprise and with trading partners across the Internet through the exchange of XML-formatted business documents.
Microsoft Commerce Server 4.0. The next generation of the industry’s leading packaged business-to-consumer commerce software provides deeper personalization.
Microsoft® SQL Server™ "Shiloh". The next generation of the popular SQL Server 7.0 database. This new version adds native XML support, enhanced data-mining capabilities, and integration with Windows 2000 for even greater scalability and availability.

All of the Windows DNA 2000 building blocks are designed to work together and will exploit Windows 2000. They also share a common component model in COM+ and can be easily integrated with a common set of development tools. Developers can focus on solving business problems as opposed to overcoming the barriers between different products. The entire family of Windows DNA 2000 solutions is expected to ship by the middle of 2000.

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Windows DNA 2000: The Pieces

Microsoft Windows 2000

The next major release of the Windows operating system, Windows 2000 is a rock-solid, high-performance, fully integrated Web application platform with Windows DNA application services. Previously available separately, the core set of services required to build distributed Web applications are now fully integrated into the operating system. Among the key features:

Component model and services. COM+ builds on COM's integrated services and features, making it easier for developers to create and use software components in any language, using any tool. Delivered in Microsoft Windows 2000, COM+ is designed to preserve and extend developers' current investments in COM. Applications currently using COM technology will work in the COM+ environment.
Web server. Internet Information Server (IIS) 5.0 takes high performance (it’s 400% faster) and reduced cost of ownership to a new level, as well as tightly integrating with Windows 2000 administration, setup, directory services, clustering, security, networking, and transaction services.
Active Server Pages. The industry leading Web page generation technology allows server-side scripting to create and run dynamic, interactive Web server applications.
Transactions. Microsoft Transaction Server is a component-based transaction processing system for developing, deploying, and managing high-performing, scalable, and robust enterprise, Internet, and intranet server applications.
Messaging. Microsoft Message Queue (MSMQ) makes it easy to integrate applications, implement a push-style business event delivery environment between applications, and build reliable applications that work over unreliable but cost-effective networks. Because of MSMQ’s superior ease-of-use, integrated, and comprehensive feature set, Microsoft expects that MSMQ will quickly become the message queuing technology of choice for Microsoft Windows operating system-based applications.
Data access. ActiveX® Data Objects (ADO) is Microsoft's strategic, high-level interface to all kinds of data. ADO provides consistent, high-performance access to data, whether you're creating a front-end database client or middle-tier business object using an application, tool, language, or even an Internet browser. ADO is the single data interface you need to know for one- to n-tier client/server and Web-based data-driven solution development.
XML. Windows 2000 is the first operating system with integrated, high-performance XML support for easy data exchange between disparate businesses and enterprise systems. XML support can be found throughout Windows 2000, which includes a built-in, high-performance parser, support for XML streaming and persistence, XML recordset translation, and support for building XML data islands in Internet Explorer. The Microsoft XML Parser is a high-performance, validating parser fully compliant with the W3C XML 1.0 standard. By virtue of its componentized design, it is easily integrated with any Windows operating system-based application and programmed using any programming or scripting language such as ECMAScript, Java, Perl, Python, SQL, the Visual Basic® development system, the Visual C++® development system or Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript). Further, it supports the W3C XML Document Object Model (DOM), the XML Stylesheet Language (XSL) W3C working draft and the XML 1.0 Namespaces Recommendation.

Microsoft AppCenter Server

AppCenter Server harnesses the power of server farms and enables them to be managed as a single machine. AppCenter Server, one of the new building blocks in Windows DNA 2000, will include a complete set of deployment, management, and diagnostic tools for Web applications running in multiple server configurations, and will provide increased scalability and reliability for mission-critical Web applications. AppCenter Server will extend the core set of Windows DNA services built into Windows 2000. Together with Windows 2000 and Visual Studio, Microsoft will be providing a best of breed Web-application server solution built on Windows DNA 2000, allowing customers to build, deploy, and manage high volume, high availability Web applications.

Microsoft "Babylon" Integration Server

Microsoft’s "Babylon" Integration Server solves the problem of integrating the Windows platform with other non-Windows enterprise systems running on platforms such as IBM mainframes, AS400, and UNIX. By using Babylon’s powerful and comprehensive bidirectional integration services, developers are freed from platform boundaries and can build highly scalable distributed applications that incorporate existing processes and data without requiring any recoding or "wrapping" of existing code. This allows businesses to quickly build new business critical Windows DNA 2000 applications while preserving investment in best-of-breed and custom in-house developed solutions. The integration services provided with Babylon include:

Network and Security Integration Services. Built on Microsoft’s award winning SNA Server technology, such services include: extensive support for SNA and LAN protocols and APIs and integrated security that supports password synchronization and single sign-on. These services are scalable up to 30,000 sessions and support the load balancing and hot backup of these sessions. Babylon will also include support for Active Directory™ services.
Data Integration Services. Babylon provides several data integration components that enable access, transformation, and replication of data in heterogeneous database environments regardless of the platform. Babylon includes the following data integration services:
- Heterogeneous replication services. Provides bidirectional replication (merge, snapshot and incremental) between Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, and Oracle.
- ODBC and OLEDB providers. Provides access to enterprise relational and non-relational databases and file systems including DB2, VSAM, AS400 file system, Oracle, and Sybase
- Host-initiated data access. Allows DB2 developers to transparently access SQL Server as a peer DB2 data source.
Application Integration Services. Babylon also includes comprehensive application-integration services. Babylon supports both the traditional asynchronous (e.g. messaging) or synchronous (e.g. COM/DCOM) communication. Babylon will also support the increasingly popular XML standards. One of Babylon’s key features, Application Integration Services enables developers to incorporate existing transactions and business logic into new distributed applications. There are four primary Babylon components for enabling application integration:
- COM Transaction Integrator (COMTI). COMTI enables CICS and IMS transaction programs to be accessed as Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) or COM+ components. These components are fully transactional and provide support for two-phase commit. As COM+ components, these objects are available and re-usable by a number of COM compliant development tools. COMTI also provides the ability for CICS transactions to initiate MTS transactions.
- XML Transaction Integrator (XMLTI). XMLTI provides an XML interface to COMTI components. This allows XML-formatted documents and messages, including BizTalk-compatible schema and BizTalk Server–routed messages to initiate transactions. This feature is extremely useful for e-commerce–enabling existing business processes.
  Both COMTI and XMLTI use the Babylon Component Builder. The Babylon Component builder provides developers with a graphical, drag and drop environment for encapsulating existing business logic and automatically generates the appropriate COM+-enabled component and XML interfaces.
- MSMQ to MQ Series Bridge. Provides seamless messaging exchange between MQ Series and MSMQ Messaging formats.
- Babylon SDK. Babylon ships with an SDK that allows ISVs and customers to build value-added components to the Babylon foundation. This SDK allows Babylon to be extended to access platforms, applications, and data sources not currently supported in the Babylon product. In addition, the SDK can be used to enhance support for existing Babylon features, such as adding additional business logic to COMTI-enabled transactions.

Microsoft BizTalk Server

Microsoft BizTalk Server provides the tools and infrastructure that companies require to interchange business documents among various platforms and operating systems regardless of the application being used to process the documents. Companies can easily exchange documents between applications within their own organization. BizTalk Server also provides a standard gateway for sending and receiving documents via the Internet, which allows companies to interchange documents with external trading partners. By taking advantage of Microsoft BizTalk-compatible schemas, which are a framework based on Extensible Markup Language (XML) schemas that follow industry standards, BizTalk Server enables organizations to effectively and efficiently conduct business online. This solution does more than help businesses use their existing systems to find customers and partners on the Internet or to sell them goods; it makes establishing long-term trading relationships easy and beneficial to a company’s bottom line. The following business scenarios are some typical situations in which companies can use BizTalk Server as a platform to build their business-to-business solutions:

Trading partner integration. Web-based or traditional Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), supply chain integration, order management, invoicing, and shipping coordination.
Automated procurement. Maintenance Repair and Operations (MRO) pricing and purchasing, order tracking, and government procurement.
Business-to-business portals. Enterprise portals and extranets, trading communities, electronic catalog management, content syndication, and post-sale customer management.
Business process integration. Commerce site to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) integration, commerce site to legacy integration, and ERP to ERP integration.

Whether a company has been engaged in business-to-business for a decade or is just beginning to see the value of this mode of operation, BizTalk Server has the right combination of document interchange and transformation capabilities coupled with enhanced trading partner management tools. Add to this a rich extensible platform with scalability, reliability, and security features, and it becomes clear that BizTalk Server is what companies need today to excel in business-to-business e-commerce.

Microsoft Commerce Server 4.0

The follow-on release to the leading Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition, Microsoft Commerce Server 4.0 will greatly simplify the process of building sophisticated, customer-centric Internet and extranet selling sites. Commerce Server will help make it easier for business managers to more effectively control and manage their online business by giving them the tools to know their customers, how customers interface with the site, and how to best reach existing customers as well as attract new customers. The closed-loop merchandising capabilities of Commerce Server will make the site more relevant to users over time, building loyalty in the customer base.

Business managers will benefit from Commerce Server's real-time marketing capabilities including a higher-performance personalization and targeting system, advanced catalog management, and sophisticated business analysis with OLAP services. For the IT manager, Commerce Server will provide a more scalable and robust e-commerce foundation using the Windows 2000 Active Directory directory service and tight integration with Microsoft SQL Server 7.0.

For integration with legacy environments within the organization and for application integration across the value chain, Commerce Server provides seamless integration with both BizTalk Server and Babylon. Businesses will be able to leverage the ubiquitous applicability of XML-based BizTalk schema easily from online promotions on Web marketplaces to backend interchange with customers and partners. Commerce Server will also make it easy to take advantage of the rich promotional services of MSN, including LinkExchange, to help build the online customer base more rapidly.

Over 100 industry-leading independent software vendors have built solutions that integrate with Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition. These domain experts are building and delivering horizontal and vertical industry-specific applications that provide special functionality (such as international tax calculations, product configuration or shipping rates) or assist with integration (such as interfaces with popular ERP packages). The range of these solutions is extensive and includes payment, tax, shipping, logistics, procurement, accounting, customer management, enterprise-resource planning, and EDI. This partner-centric approach to providing e-commerce solutions offers customers the best-of-breed choice of solutions that best meet their unique needs.

Commerce Server 4.0 provides the best set of tools and services to rapidly deploy custom, extensible e-commerce solutions based on Windows DNA 2000.

Microsoft SQL Server "Shiloh"

The next major release of Microsoft SQL Server, code named "Shiloh", builds on the success of SQL Server 7.0 in the areas of scalability, availability, manageability and data warehousing, and it introduces significant new functionality focused on e-commerce.

In the area of high-performance and enterprise-class scalability, Shiloh is designed to exploit support in Windows 2000 for more processors, large amounts of system memory, and eventually for support of 64-bit hardware platforms. In an effort to continually raise the bar on availability, Shiloh offers significantly improved clustering support by exploiting Windows 2000 four-way clustering. While SQL Server 7.0 already leads the industry in manageability and ease-of-use, Shiloh improves on these capabilities through tight integration with Windows 2000 Active Directory. Furthermore, Shiloh includes significant improvements to existing management tools and utilities and introduces more self-tuning and self-managing engine features.

SQL Server 7.0 represents the industry’s most comprehensive platform for data warehousing and decision support through the tight integration of OLAP services, data transformation services, Repository, and English Query. Shiloh continues this innovation with major improvements throughout the system. Significantly, the Shiloh relational engine adds materialized views to improve the performance of complex queries in very large database environments. Also, Shiloh introduces new data-mining functionality designed to automatically discover hidden relationships in large volumes of data and to make predictions based on historical data. These data-mining features will be implemented to hide the complexity of this sophisticated technology from end-users and to allow developers to easily integrate third-party data-mining products into customers’ applications. Finally, in the area of e-commerce, Shiloh deeply integrates support for XML and database access via the Web.

Microsoft Visual Studio

Microsoft Visual Studio is the world's most powerful, comprehensive, and integrated suite of developer tools for rapidly building enterprise Web applications on the Windows 2000 platform based on the Windows DNA 2000 architecture. Visual Studio 6.0 addresses all aspects of Windows DNA application development, including integrated tools for multiple tier application design, user interface development, middle-tier component development and assembly, database programming and design, performance analysis, and team-based development support. Developers can use Visual Studio 6.0 to take full advantage of Windows 2000 features such as COM+, XML, Active Directory, and Internet Information Server 5.0.

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Broad Industry Support

Broad industry support exists for the underlying technologies in Windows DNA 2000. The most pervasive and popular of these technologies is COM, the Component Object Model. More than 2000 companies are shipping business software products based on COM technologies today. They have chosen COM primarily to gain the benefits of object-oriented reusable components within their product architectures. COM is a mature technology that provides a very rich, robust infrastructure for developing reusable components.

Business customers have come to rely heavily on COM and Windows DNA-based applications. They are demanding greater reliability from their applications and their operating system. Microsoft is committed to delivering a new level of reliability and availability to customers running applications on the Windows 2000. Microsoft has created the Windows 2000 Readiness Program for Applications and Developers to provide the resources necessary to ensure applications will be both compatible and reliable running on Windows 2000.

Windows DNA 2000 provides a complete, integrated platform for building tomorrow’s distributed Web applications today. It is one part of a series of new products, technologies, and initiatives designed to empower the developer to take full advantage of the next generation of the Web.

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Windows DNA in the Real World

Windows DNA has been a strategic tool for software developers, development managers, software architects, and chief technology officers who have needed to design and create distributed applications using Internet technologies. By employing Windows DNA, organizations have built or extended existing applications that combine the power and richness of the PC, the robustness of client/server computing, and the universal reach and global communications capabilities of the Internet.

Windows DNA, and its underlying products and technologies, have been adopted by some of today’s most innovative companies for building their Internet sites. Some of these are:

Company	Description
Barnes & Noble	Bookseller Barnes & Noble, Inc. needed to develop a Web-based commerce solution quickly, so the company turned to Microsoft products to create a friendly, easy-to-access electronic storefront: barnesandnoble.com. With the benefit of a real-time shipping, order management, and financial reporting system based on Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 and Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition, barnesandnoble.com can serve customers in Internet time.
BUY.COM	BUY.COM has become a leader in Internet retailing, providing one of today’s largest e-commerce portals on the World Wide Web. They chose Microsoft® Windows NT® with Internet Information Server for their Web farm, as they were proven and well supported products, combined with the advanced site creation features in Site Server Commerce Edition and Visual Studio tools. They selected SQL Server 7.0 for the backend system due to its ease of management, impressive scalability and reliability, and performance under unpredictable load conditions. SQL Server 7.0 is used for handling the thousands of user transactions, store and locate product information, and keep track of the expanding customer population.
Costco	Costco is a successful warehouse membership retailer with over 300 warehouse outlets worldwide and 30 billion dollars in annual sales. Already a successful retailer, Costco went online to position itself for the future of merchandising and to provide additional high value options and services for its member/customers. Using Microsoft Windows NT Server, SQL Server 7.0, and Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition in a seamless application enabled Costco to develop a custom site with a unique interface that maps to their core principles.
Dell	Dell Computer Corporation is one of the world's largest computer manufacturers, racking up $16.8 billion in sales over its last four quarters. The Internet has provided a great opportunity for Dell's direct-selling method, allowing the company to move more than $10 million worth of computers a day over the Web. Within a few years, Dell expects that 50 percent of all its transactions will be conducted online. To manage its rapidly growing electronic commerce business, Dell uses Microsoft commerce technology: Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition, Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0, and Microsoft SQL Server.
drugstore.com	"NT's modular architecture allows us to scale our service by adding more (often cheap) machines, instead of trying to cram more and more resources into a monolithic solution. We've leveraged technologies like MSMQ and OLE DB to create a truly distributed system that we're confident we can grow into one of the largest e-commerce sites on the Internet." - Sean Nolan, Development Manager, drugstore.com
Eddie Bauer	Eddie Bauer is a casual lifestyle product retailer that has been a household name since 1920. In order to maintain this position in the marketplace, it has not only worked to keep its styles current, but it has also kept up with constantly changing marketing venues and developments in technology. To take advantage of the latest sales and marketing opportunity-meeting the needs of customers on the World Wide Web-Eddie Bauer worked with Fry Multimedia to develop a successful Web site that runs on Microsoft Windows NT Server with Microsoft Internet Information Server, Microsoft SQL Server, and Microsoft Site Server Commerce Edition. As a result of this partnership, the Web site is helping Eddie Bauer increase sales and extend its brand image to many more consumers.
GMAC-RFC	Using the Microsoft Windows DNA architecture with COM components, GMAC-RFC created an automated loan underwriting system that reduces turnaround time from several days to less than a minute! Developed in just eight weeks, the system is easy to maintain, provides flexibility for expansion, and gives GMAC-RFC a host of reusable components that are already reducing development time for other projects.
Jack White & Company	Jack White & Company recently moved their Web-based brokerage services from an outsourced Web site in-house. Working with Yuri Software, Inc., Jack White & Company used Microsoft Internet Information Server 4.0 (IIS), Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS), Microsoft SQL Server, and a host of other Microsoft software, to quickly create a powerful new Web site that has improved customer service and lowered administrative costs.
Marks and Spencer	Global retailer Marks and Spencer had 1999 revenues of $13.2B and is the UK’s premier clothing, food and financial services retailer—it owns 435 stores in the UK, Europe and worldwide including Brooks Brothers and Kings Supermarkets in the US. Marks and Spencer saw an opportunity to leverage their uniquely strong integration with suppliers into a dynamic, event-driven, global supply chain which responds swiftly and efficiently to customer needs. They decided the best solution to meet its needs was the Microsoft Biztalk Server, due for release next year. The initial solution aims to move transaction level point-of-sale data from the stores to the current Head Office systems in near real time, and is based Microsoft NT 4.0 Server running Microsoft SQL Server 6.5, Microsoft Visual Basic, BizTalk XML, and Microsoft Message Queue Service, BizTalk Server, MSMQ/MQSeries Bridge (to some S/390 applications) or COMTI (through to CICS/DB2 applications).
The Motley Fool	The Motley Fool, a light-hearted Web business about a serious subject—investing—finds it anything but foolish to run its entire business on a Microsoft platform. Development tools and Internet software are all from Microsoft. Allowing it to keep up with its rising popularity are Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 development system, Microsoft Site Server 2.0, Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0, Microsoft Site Server Enterprise Edition (the previous version of Site Server Commerce Edition), and Microsoft SQL Server 6.5.
Mary Kay, Inc.	Mary Kay chose the Microsoft platform to support its e-commerce solutions, mymk.com and Mary Kay InTouch. Both are based on Windows NT Server 4.0, SQL Server 7.0, Visual Studio and Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition. Partnering with MCSP BEST Systems, Inc., they’re extending these e-commerce offerings to over 500,000 Independent Beauty Consultants (IBCs) in twenty international locations.
Merrill Lynch	Merrill Lynch uses Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) and Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) to integrate the company's strategic enterprise applications into its corporate-wide desktop environment, deployed to over 20,000 desktops worldwide. Using the Microsoft Windows DNA architecture, Merrill Lynch has built a distributed, Internet-based order-entry system that improves brokers’ productivity, enabling them to respond to the market much more quickly than before.
Nasdaq	Known as "the stock market of the twenty-first century," The Nasdaq Stock Market, the world's second-largest stock exchange, needed a Web site that was secure, reliable, multifunctional, fast, versatile, comprehensive, and current, with up-to-the-minute market-summary information and quotes as immediate as regulations would allow. The site's architecture consists of a single Web server, with hot backup capabilities, based on Windows NT Server's built-in Web server, Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), integrated with a Microsoft SQL Server-based database of market summary, company, and issue information, as well as user feedback.
Nordstrom.com	As a complement to their in-store sales, Nordstrom expanded with an electronic commerce site available to their customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The site offers their Internet customers an exciting shopping experience and the exceptional service their in-store customers have come to expect. A major design goal of the Nordstrom Web Commerce team was to create a site that could easily scale capacity as Web traffic increased. The Microsoft platform emerged as the clear choice. The site leverages the tight integration of SQL Server 7.0 with Site Server Commerce Edition built on the Windows NT Server 4.0 operating system using the Visual Studio suite of tools, and includes Microsoft clustering and transaction processing services.
QUALCOMM	QUALCOMM’s new OmniTRACS Online (www.wheresmyload.com) solution provides wireless tracking of real-time freight data over the World Wide Web. This Web-based system gives shippers and transportation companies a way to check the whereabouts of truck shipments any time is capable of handling two million database transactions a day and tracking up to 300,000 trucks a day. OmniTRACS Online was built using Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0, the Microsoft Visual Studio development system, and Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Enterprise Edition. QUALCOMM took advantage of the Microsoft Windows DNA Architecture and structured OmniTRACS Online as a classic 3-tier client/server application.
Quote.com	Quote.com, an Internet-based financial information services company, has over 300,000 registered users through its Web site (www.quote.com) and millions more through more than 200 other sites that offer its services, including many leading brokerages, banks, and Internet media outlets. Quote.com chose the Microsoft platform and Windows DNA architecture for its highly trafficked Web site. Technologies utilized include Windows NT Server, Internet Information Server, Site Server, SQL Server, Visual Studio, Active Server Pages (ASP), and COM. Quote.com is currently beginning development work with Windows 2000 and COM+.
Turner Broadcasting	Turner Broadcasting Sales attracts a lot of eyeballs. On its popular television network CNN, Headline News, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies, and others, Turner sells close to 2 billion worth of advertising each year. Turner developed an application, using Microsoft Visual Studio development system and Microsoft SQL Server 7.0, that matches up advertising audience commitments with Nielsen viewership numbers on a daily basis. The result: real-time business intelligence that helps Turner make smart inventory decisions and maintain a high level of customer-focused support. High levels of scalability are achieved with a 3-tier Windows DNA architecture using VB objects on running under MTS on NT Servers. Over 40 Gigabytes of data is managed using SQL Server with universal access provided by ActiveX Data Objects (ADO).
TV Guide	TVGuide.Com was launched February 1st and since has become one of the most popular entertainment sites on the Web, currently with over 4 Million visits/day. The site offers unique services such as TV Listing, and online Movie Previews with NetShow. Using Windows Load Balancing Services, SQL 7.0, and Site Server Commerce Edition, the Visual Studio application has plenty of room to spare to meet the planned goal of 10 Million visits/day.
Waterhouse Securities, Inc.	Waterhouse's customers demand service not only in person and over the phone, but also on the Internet. To meet that demand, Waterhouse, one of America's top discount brokers, has equipped its Web site with webBroker, an online investment solution from Marketware International, Inc. Marketware used the Microsoft Visual C++ development system to build webBroker, which runs on 50 servers spread across two sites; system data is stored in a 15-gigabyte database running under SQL Server. At present, Waterhouse is comfortably processing some 30,000 trades a day through webBroker.

This list includes just a few of the top Web sites that rely on Windows DNA and Windows NT for their line-of-business applications. From top multinational corporations to traditional retailers and pure e-commerce companies, the leaders in the Internet are relying on the flexibility and power of Windows DNA as the core of their Internet and intranet sites. According to Media Matrix, 24% of the top 500 Web sites worldwide use Windows NT for their home page server vs. only 18% for Solaris. One quarter of the top 50 shopping sites run on Windows NT and Internet Information Servers, compared with 18% for Sun.

For more on Microsoft's developer initiatives, please visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/ .

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