July 2000

Exchange 2000: Web Storage System, Workflow Tools, and CDO Turbocharge Collaboration Apps

Microsoft Exchange 2000, the upcoming version of Exchange Server for Windows 2000, provides many new features including integration with Active Directory, Web Storage System events and forms, and a new version of Collaboration Data Objects (CDO). Exchange 2000 also provides a workflow engine and design tool to create workflow applications. This article will give you an overview of these new features and looks at ways to do a few standard tasks with the new version of CDO. Also included is a sample workflow application that manages the posting of messages to a public server to illustrate the new workflow engine and workflow design tool. Sean McCormick

Microsoft Office 2000: Create Dynamic Digital Dashboards Using Office, OLAP, and DHTML

Digital Dashboards provide users with one single interface through which they can view information from a variety of sources that have been chosen specifically for that user. In addition, dashboards allow a user to view the information offline, adding portability to the mix. This article discusses options for building a dashboard based on the Microsoft Outlook folder home pages feature. It covers culling the data from disparate sources and storing it using the MSDE. It then discusses the creation of nugget definitions for structuring the data, and providing a synchronization mechanism to update to the data stores. Todd Abel

Web Security: Part 2: Introducing the Web Application Manager, Client Authentication Options, and Process Isolation

This article, the second of two parts, continues coverage of Web security for Windows. It introduces the Web Application Manager in IIS that allows Web processes to be isolated, decreasing the security risk associated with running in a logon session. The article then picks up where Part One left off-it discusses authentication methods such as basic authentication, digest authentication, integrated Windows authentication, and anonymous logons, and the benefits and drawbacks of each. Keith Brown

SQL/MTS: Automating the Creation of COM+ Components for a Database Schema

Using Microsoft Windows DNA architecture as a guideline, it's possible to create scalable multitier database applications with COM+ and Microsoft Transaction Services. In fact, you can use existing table definitions to automatically build the MTS/COM+ business logic layer and data access components for your application. This article will walk you through the development of database transactions by mapping the transactions to automatically generated MTS/COM+ components. This technique can greatly simplify the task of creating components for a large project. Aleksandr Mikunov

A Simple XML-driven Tool: Monitor Your Web Site's Activity with COM and Active Scripting

This article describes a simple Web site monitoring tool built with XML, JScript, Windows Script Host, and COM objects. Although it is not intended to replace complete Web site monitoring software products, it has many useful features that help to keep Web servers up and running. An XML configuration file specifies which Web sites to monitor and the actions to be taken if the site isn't functioning properly. In addition, the tool can be scheduled to run at any specified interval using the Windows Task Scheduler. Functions that probe the sites, log events, and send e-mail notifications are written in JScript. Panos Kougiouris

Building a Custom Data Grid: Performing Ad Hoc Web Reporting with a VBScript 5.0 Class Object

A flexible, customizable grid for displaying data is a useful tool for ASP developers. It allows Web visitors to customize their view of your data. This article takes the data grid presented in "Ad Hoc Web Reporting with ADO 2.0" by John Papa and Charles Caison (MIND, December 1998) and adds handy features such as a finds feature that supports multiple finds and a mode for adding and editing records. This version also improves response time by allowing asynchronous record download and it componentizes the code so it can be used as a standalone VBScript class object that can be reused in other pages. Randall Kindig

Go Global: Designing Your ASP-based Web Site to Support Globalization

If you have a Web site for your business, you already have an international presence. But how can you make sure users in any country can access your site effectively? The Trigeminal Software site at https://www.trigeminal.com has pages localized into up to 48 languages and allows users to see pages in the language of their choice. This article describes how the site was implemented and how issues such as whether the site should use frames and what character set to choose for multibyte languages were dealt with. Which database to use for storing dynamic content, whether to use static or dynamic pages, and how to implement localized solutions on both Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 is also discussed. Michael Kaplan

Editor's Note: Kindly Check the Attached LOVELETTER Coming from Me

Flux: The importance of being early

Joshua Trupin

New Stuff: Resources for Your Developer Toolbox

Theresa W. Carey

Web Q&A: Using a DTC to Submit a Form, Using Word in a Web Page, Sending E-mail from Forms

Robert Hess

Cutting Edge: Writing Custom OLE DB Providers Using ATL

Dino Esposito

The XML Files: Addressing Infosets with XPath

Aaron Skonnard

Serving the Web: Migrating from MTS to COM+

Ken Spencer

Win32 Q&A: Handy Features in Windows, and Interlocked Functions

Jeffrey Richter

Under the Hood: Happy 10th Anniversary, Windows

Matt Pietrek

House of COM: Using ADO to Create XML-based Recordsets

Don Box

C++ Q&A: Enabling Menus in MFC Apps, Changing the Behavior of Enter with DLGKEYS Sample App

Paul DiLascia

MSDN Update: News this Month from MSDN

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