[H-GEN] [Fwd: INFO: Visual Studio.NET Too Loose for Mission Critical Apps]

[Stellios Keskinidis]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and  ]
[ Unix-related topics.  Please observe the list's charter.           ]
[ Worthwhile understanding: http://www.humbug.org.au/netiquette.html ]


News src for this article?

> -----Forwarded Message-----
> 
> + Visual Studio.NET Too Loose for Mission Critical Apps
> 
> By Jason Stamper
> 
> Microsoft Corp has conceded that its Visual Studio.NET development 
> environment is not ideal for the development of mission critical 
> applications. Yet at its launch last Wednesday (CI No 4,354) Microsoft 
> described the product as its most important to date for developers.
> 
> The Redmond, Washington-based firm has now admitted that the "loosely 
> coupled" nature of its .NET Framework means that developers are more likely 
> to use Visual Studio.NET to expose or integrate their existing 
> mission-critical applications, rather than actually  building them. "The 
> first applications are not going to be the mission-critical applications," 
> Mark Quirk, Microsoft group technical manager for the .NET developer group 
> told ComputerWire.
> 
> Microsoft's .NET Framework means that applications written using Visual 
> Studio.NET are "loosely coupled". Tightly coupled transactions, on the 
> other hand, rely on what developers call "two-phase commit", a way of 
> ensuring simplicity of design, but just as importantly data integrity and 
> security. Under two-phase commit, an object can only fulfill a transaction 
> if it has confirmation from a second object that it is able to do so.
> 
> But Microsoft's .NET Framework does away with two-phase commit, opting 
> instead for a loosely coupled scheme where objects or components do not 
> need to know as much about each other. There are advantages to being 
> loosely coupled - it can prove faster, and make it easier to integrate 
> components, which is the major reason for Microsoft choosing to abandon a 
> tightly coupled approach. In the web services world, the components of an 
> application may be distributed around an intranet or even the internet, so 
> communication between them was kept deliberately loose.
> 
> Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based software development tools vendor Bowstreet 
> Inc's Andy Roberts, VP and CTO said: "I think Microsoft and IBM thought 
> they needed to get something out fast and make it a standard, so they got 
> SOAP [Simple Object Access Protocol] out - it's simple and working, but 
> transactions are loosely coupled." SOAP, an emerging web services standard, 
> uses so-called "available to promise" transactions - a loosely coupled 
> messaging approach with compensating transactions in the event of failure.
> Microsoft's Quirk, meanwhile, said the development of mission-critical 
> applications with Visual Studio.NET will ramp up as the standards in the 
> web services world mature. "They may well be internal type applications to 
> start with," he said. "Like [UK building society] the Nationwide, which is 
> using Visual Studio.NET to define its mortgage process. The first phase of 
> Visual Studio.NET may well be exposing the core stuff [customers] have 
> already got. Maybe we will see mission-critical applications being built, 
> but I wouldn't like to say how soon that will be."
> 
> Either way, if Microsoft does not include the most reliable two-phase 
> commit transaction handling in Visual Studio.NET by default, there are 
> others who will add it for developers as part of their offering. Barry 
> Morris, CEO of Dublin, Ireland-based component development and integration 
> company Iona Technologies Plc said: "That's the difference between us and 
> Microsoft. We have a very good two phase commit protocol, and it works very 
> well over SOAP, too. Microsoft doesn't have that, and it's not high on 
> their priorities either."
> 
> Jason Stamper is the editor of Computer Business Review (CBR), 
> ComputerWire's monthly magazine for IT strategists.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> * This is list (humbug) general handled by majordomo at lists.humbug.org.au .
> * Postings to this list are only accepted from subscribed addresses of
> * lists 'general' or 'general-post'.
> 


--
* This is list (humbug) general handled by majordomo at lists.humbug.org.au .
* Postings to this list are only accepted from subscribed addresses of
* lists 'general' or 'general-post'.