Introduction

At the Professional Developers' Conference in Orlando last July, Microsoft unveiled its latest architecture, .NET. Its various features and components were explained to the large audience by a number of speakers.

So what is .NET?The term is, essentially, a new marketing label which Microsoft is sticking on existing and future products. The .NET label now features on server products such as BizTalk Server 2000 and Application Center 2000, which are based on Windows DNA 2000 technology. The most interesting feature of .NET, however, lies in the development platform, languages and protocols which it emphasizes.

By bringing us .NET, Microsoft is presenting us with a new platform designed to facilitate development of interoperable Web applications, based on a totally new architecture. For Microsoft, .NET will be a way of "programming the Web," no less. Today, the first versions of Visual Studio .NET are available, and they enable us to sketch out a relatively accurate profile of how the .NET platform is likely to look in the long run.

Aims and objectives

The goal that Microsoft has set itself is ambitious, to say the least, both in technical and strategic terms. The new .NET platform has not evolved from the DNA 2000 technology currently available; rather, it is a totally new technology which is likely to shake up more than a few deep-rooted ideas.

.NET is an entirely new platform and technology which introduces a host of new products, whose compatibility with existing technology is not always guaranteed. It offers support for 27 programming languages, which share a hierarchy of classes providing basic services. .NET applications no longer run in native machine code, having abandaned Intel x86 code in favor of an intermediate language called MSIL which runs in a sort of virtual machine called the Common Language Runtime (CLR).

In addition, .NET makes intensive use of XML, and places a lot of emphasis on the SOAP protocol. Thanks to SOAP, Microsoft is hoping to bring us into a new era of programming which, rather than relying on the assembly of components or objects, is based on the reuse of services. SOAP and Web Services are the cornerstones of the .NET platform.

However, there is no need to start worrying yet about the future of DNA applications currently in production; as Microsoft themselves have admitted, the final version of .NET will not be available until early 2002, and .NET is able to run existing applications in native mode, without giving them all the .NET benefits.

Contrary to what Microsoft would have us believe (apparently in an aim to reassure current customers), changes run very deep and affect almost every component in the Microsoft DNA architecture:

• The IIS Web Server has dropped its effective but fragile multi-threaded model in favor of a multi-process model reminiscent of the Apache model.
• ASP technology gives way to ASP.NET (initially called ASP+), where interpreted scripts are replaced by codes compiled when they are first invoked, as for JSPs.
• Win32 APIs such as ATL and MFC are replaced by a coherent set of Base Framework classes.
• VB.NET no longer ensures ascending compatibility from VB6, as this language receives a lot of contributions (inheritance, …) in order to comply with the Common Language Specification (CLS) agreement.
• COM+ 2.0 is a totally original distributed components model which does not retain any inherited element from the COM/DCOM/COM+ lineup. To this end, COM+ 2.0 no longer uses the Windows Registry to register local or remote components: deployment of components in .NET will take you back to the good old days when installing a program meant copying files into a directory and uninstalling involved nothing more complicated than deleting the files.
• A new programming language called C# ("C sharp") is born: this is a modern object-oriented language, something of a cross between C++ and Java . C# was created by Anders Hejlsberg, architect of a number of languages and tools at Borland, including the famous Delphi.
• The new programming model, based on SOAP and Web Services, fundamentally changes the way in which applications are designed, and opens the way for a new profession: online provision of Web services.

These changes are moving towards a looser coupling between the Windows 2000 operating system and upper layers offering application server services. We look at these changes in more detail below, so as to give you an insight into the transformations that are taking place.

What is more, these technical changes, linked to the fact that the .NET platform will be a massive user of standards from independent bodies such as the W3C, the IETF and the ECMA, are leading a lot of analysts (including the Gartner Group) to surmise that "Microsoft is opening up."

From a strategic point of view, Microsoft has found a way to occupy a position of predominance on the Internet; the company has been out to achieve this for a long time, but until now, it had not found the means to do so. (We remember the episode in which Internet Explorer was provided free of charge, ready-installed on every PC equipped with Windows; Internet Explorer's many proprietary functionalities were extremely detrimental to rival Netscape.)

Today, with .NET, Microsoft is sending us a vision of an Internet made up of an infinite number of interoperable Web applications which together form a global service exchange network. These Web Services are based on the Simple Object Access Procotol (SOAP) and XML. SOAP was initially submitted to the IETF by DevelopMentor, Microsoft and Userland Software. Today, a number of vendors, including IBM, are greatly involved in SOAP.

Not only are these Web Services likely to develop on the Internet, but they may also change the way we plan information systems in enterprises, by making SOAP systematically used as application integration middleware, playing the role of a simple but efficient, standard EAI. An enterprise information system could then also become a network of front and back-office applications which interoperate through SOAP, and reciprocally use the Web Services that they implement.

It is not rash to suppose that Microsoft, through the numerous stakes it has acquired in multimedia content publishers, will soon become a provider itself, by hiring out or offering subscription to numerous Web services.

In the meantime, however, other vendors are not sitting back: IBM and, more recently, Oracle have announced offerings which enable the creation of Web Services. IBM, which has long been a supporter of SOAP, offers its "Web Services Development Environment" on its Alphaworks site, while Oracle has also just adopted SOAP, within 9i. Oracle has dubbed its offering "Dynamic Services", but it does not seem to be clearly defined as yet.

Therefore, Web Services will help Microsoft move from a model in which the majority of its revenues come from sales of boxed products and licenses designed for individual micro-computers, to a model revolving around subscription and hire of services carried by software infrastructures, parts of which, we can assume, will be provided free of charge. A few coinciding rumors suggest that Microsoft may eventually distribute its SDK and command line compilers free of charge, and would only market Visual Studio .NET. This is the sort of strategy that was behind the success of Java, where JDKs have been provided free by Sun since the outset.

This is a rather daring change in business strategy. Financial analysts agree that such changes of direction only rarely enable market leaders to keep their position at the top. The example of IBM, which never managed to regain the position it occupied when central computers reigned supreme, speaks volumes.

Some believe that this change in strategy is a clever move in more ways than one, as it will enable a number of lawsuits brought by the US Department of Justice to be nipped in the bud, and may allow Microsoft to smoothly ride the wave of change which lies ahead, under pressure from users who want to use IT resources and, above all, Internet from different mobile devices, not just from their home or office PCs.

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TechMetrix Research is a technically focused analyst firm focused on e-business application development needs. Based in Boston, Mass., the firm publishes comparison reports and product reviews designed to aid enterprises with decision making and to keep pace with the fast-moving e-business market.

TechMetrix is a U.S.-based subsidiary of SQLI, a European company that offers on-site development services to international organizations. SQLI specializes in e-business project development.