A Microsoft official strssed the impotance of web
services in building the future of IT at the Tech Ed 2003
conference in Dallas yesterday.
Paul Flessner, Microsoft's senior-vice president for the Windows
Server division, offered web services and Microsoft's plethora of
products such as Windows Server 2003 as a next wave of
computing.
He stressed that web services presents a standards-bases
approach to application infrastructure.
"It's the right thing to do, it's the right thing for our
industry, it's the right way to make our applications relevant for
a longer period of time," Flessner said. "It will lower the cost of
investment if we do it correctly."
Microsoft acknowledged not every system will be based on
Microsoft software, but will support integration with other
platforms.
"Please get connected with web services. I think it's what we
need to do as an industry. I hope you do it on the Microsoft
platform and .net," Flessner said.
Flessner provided details on Microsoft's solutions based on the
Windows platform, covering aspects ranging from federated identity
to XML and application management. Microsoft is proposing its
"Windows Server System" as its IT platform, the foundation of which
is Windows Server 2003.
Flessner acknowledged the delay of the next version of the SQL
Server database, codenamed Yukon. It is now scheduled for release
in the second half of 2004.
The delay will enable Microsoft to synchronise plans for putting
the company’s Common Language Runtime (CLR) in both its database
and development tools, said Stan Sorensen, Microsoft director SQL
Server product management.
CLR is intended to make it easy to design components and
applications in which objects interact across applications. Yukon
is also expected to feature improvements in areas such as business
intelligence and security.
A private beta release of Yukon to a select group of 1,000 users
is planned for the end of this month. A larger, public beta is
planned for 2004.
The company also unveiled a number of products including a beta
release of BizTalk Server 2004, the Jupiter e-business suite,
which combines the BizTalk Server integration system, Content
Management Server and Commerce Server and SharePoint Portal Server
Version 3.
The "Whidbey" version of the Visual Studio development tool is
also planned for release and expected to feature integration with
Yukon as well as improved IDE productivity and extended support for
XML web Services and Office programmability.
In 2006 Microsoft will release the next version of Windows
Server, which will complement the SQL Server database. The "Kodiak"
version of Exchange, will support web services and runs on top of
SQL Server, also is planned for 2006. Kodiak will be supported
automatically within Visual Studio.
The SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services for making web-based or
paper reports based on business intelligence in the database is
expected to ship by the end of this year.
Borland Software, in an agreement with Microsoft, will ship the
SQL Server 2000 Developer Edition database with Borland C#Builder
for the Microsoft .net Framework.
As part of the agreement, Microsoft will develop a Borland page
accessible on the SQL Server website where developers can obtain
information about the C#Builder tool.
Paul Krill writes for InfoWorld