Windows Server 2003 Technology Primer
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Do you need to evaluate whether to migrate to Windows Server 2003? Look at what's new, how it benefits adminstration and thin client terminal services, look into extending the capabilities of Windows 2003 with downloadable tools and more. (From
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Unleashed, second edition, by Rand Morimoto, et al. Sams Publishing, 2004, ISBN: 0672326671.)
More than a year after its release date, and well over two years from the time early adopters were putting it out in production environments, Windows Server 2003 has proven itself to be the most stable and reliable server operating system Microsoft has ever shipped. Many have called Windows Server 2003 a major Service Pack for Windows 2000 for the ease of the upgrades from Windows 2000 to Windows 2003. However, many consider the new security, fault tolerance, add-on tools, and overall functional improvements to be the long-awaited rewrite of the Windows operating system.
To the casual observer, Windows Server 2003 looks like nothing more than the Windows XP graphical user interface on top of the old Windows 2000 server operating system, with a few added utilities. However, now that organizations have been able to deploy Windows 2003 throughout their enterprises, when you look under the hood, Windows Server 2003 is a major rewrite of the Windows 2000 operating system, with significant changes to the kernel that makes Windows Server 2003 achieve the reliability, fault tolerance, and scalability that major organizations have been demanding of their network operating system for years.
This chapter introduces the significant enhancements and diverse capabilities of the Windows Server 2003 operating system, and references the chapters through the balance of this book that detail these improvements. The differences that Windows Server 2003 adds to a networking environment, along with best practices learned from enterprise implementation of Windows 2003, require a re-education so that design and implementation decisions made with previous versions of Windows are handled differently with Windows Server 2003 to take advantage of the enhanced operating system capabilities.
Windows .NET Framework Versus Windows Server 2003
When we're talking about Windows Server 2003, one of the first points that frequently needs to be clarified is the difference between the Windows Server 2003 operating system and the Windows .NET Framework. These two terms are frequently (and improperly) used interchangeably; however, they are completely different.
The Windows .NET Framework was announced first, formally during the summer of 2001, in reference to a completely new application development environment by Microsoft. When we refer to Windows Server 2003, it is an actual network operating system product in which software is installed on a server and applications are executed. Windows Server 2003 is a part of the Windows .NET Framework.
Understanding the Windows .NET Framework
The Windows .NET Framework is the application development environment in which a common language runtime, framework classes, and an application development process are defined. Until the introduction of the Windows .NET Framework, some organizations developed applications using Visual Basic; some organizations, using Visual C; some organizations, using Active Server Pages technology for a Web server; and some organizations, using an Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) front-end application to Microsoft SQL or Microsoft Access.
Now with the Windows .NET Framework, a default programming model called ASP.NET is defined. ASP.NET makes building real-world Web applications much easier. It has a series of built-in framework classes that allow a developer to call a built-in application function instead of having to code the function line by line. This capability greatly minimizes the amount of programming necessary to create a Web application similar to those created in the past.
ASP.NET does not require any single application development tool; in fact, it supports dozens of standard programming languages available today, such as VBScript, JScript, Visual Basic .NET, C#, Visual Basic, and the like.
Other significant improvements in ASP.NET include a dynamic code compilation that automatically detects changes and compiles the code so that it is ready to run at any time. The Windows .NET Framework is a distributed application environment allowing for code to be distributed across multiple systems within a Web farm.
In addition, to deploy a Windows .NET Framework application for access within an organization or to the general public, all the developer needs to do is copy the files to a Windows .NET Framework server. There is no need to run regsrv32 to register components on the server because configuration settings are stored in an XML data file within the application.
For organizations looking to develop Web-based applications, the Windows .NET Framework greatly simplifies application development. The Windows .NET Framework has created a powerful development environment that has a series of built-in routines that decrease application coding time and effort, while providing the support for existing standards for application programming languages.
As server add-ons are created for a Windows Server 2003 environment, such as Outlook Web Access for Exchange 2003 and SharePoint 2003, or even add-on tools like the Directory Services Mark-up Language (DSML), the .NET Framework is leveraged more and more in developing core applications and Feature Packs.
 This chapter is from Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Unleashed, by Rand Morimoto, et al. (Sams Publishing, 2004, ISBN: 0672326671). Check it out at your favorite bookstore today.
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