MTS Programming with Visual Basic Book

Stressing hands-on development, MTS Programming with Visual Basic serves as a valuable introduction to using Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) for the enterprise developer. This book sets a new standard by providing over a dozen detailed hands-on exercises using Microsoft tools such as Visual Basic, MTS Explorer, and the Visual Modeler. (To understand distributed computing on the Microsoft platform, you'll need to combine these tools reliably.) After looking at today's three-tiered architectures and MTS, author Scot Hillier examines Microsoft tools (such as SQL Server 7, IIS 4, and Visual Studio 98) that work together on the enterprise. After a simple exercise with Visual Modeler, Hillier covers MTS Explorer, which permits administration of MTS-enabled objects. Next the author provides some tips for designing MTS components in Visual Basic (including the ObjectContext and threads). A useful hands-on exercise lets you build a simple MTS object. The book proceeds with coverage of ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) for connecting to databases with MTS objects (including efficient "firehose" cursors). Subsequent chapters look at the advantages of polymorphism for VB class design, database transactions, and MTS security issues. The book reviews Active Server Pages (ASP) basics to get you to the Internet and follows with information on deploying and debugging MTS-based applications (including an exercise with the Visual Studio Analyzer tool). After looking at the Windows Scripting Host and Microsoft Message Queue Server (MSMQ), the book closes with an excellent case study for a three-tiered, browser-based ATM bank application. The exercise here walks through the design and implementation of this application using all relevant Microsoft tools. This sample alone can justify the cost of this excellent book, which provides a real-world introduction to enterprise development using MTS. --Richard DraganRead More