Early this year (2000), Windows 2000 arrived. This contains version 5.0 of IIS, and version 3.0 of ASP. Other than some minor additions to ASP, the core difference here is actually more to do with COM+. In Windows 2000, Microsoft combined MTS with the core COM runtime to create COM+. This provides a host of new features that make the use of components easier, as well as giving a much more stable, scalable and efficient execution platform.

Other than a few minor changes to the management interface, IIS has not changed a great deal on the surface. However, underneath, it now uses COM+ Component Services to provide a better environment for components to be executed within, including out of process execution as the default and the option to run each component in its own isolated process if required.

ASP+ and the Next Generation Web Services Framework

All this brings us to the present, with ASP+. The underlying structure of ASP+ is very different to that of previous versions, although from the 'outside' (as far as the developer is concerned) it does appear to offer a very similar interface. ASP+ is almost entirely component-based and modularized, and every page, object, and HTML element you use can be a runtime component object.

For this to perform efficiently, and provide a scalable solution, the management of these objects is a very necessary prerequisite. The new runtime environment carries out this management automatically, allowing ASP+ to become far more object-oriented in nature. This lets developers build more powerful applications by accessing these component objects in a far more granular and controlled manner.

On top of that, the object orientation of ASP+ provides extensibility for the environment as a whole. Developers can add to and extend the environment, both by creating new components or inheriting from the base classes that create them, and by over-riding selected behavior as required. Under the hood, the COM+ runtime manages the instantiation, pooling, and allocation of the objects automatically.