The Importance of the Web Application Server Architecture for Microsoft's Future

OWA is the first potentially viable Web-based application that Microsoft has produced. The Web application server architecture upon which it is built represents an important future direction if Microsoft is to successfully manage the transition toward Web-based software.

While the Web application server architecture may not be a good platform for processor-intensive applications like spreadsheets or CAD, it is a viable platform for many distributed enterprise applications. By adding services such as Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) and Microsoft Message Queue (MSMQ), developers could use this architecture to build reliable, distributed applications, such as order entry systems or inventory control systems that will require only a browser for a remote client. In the case of OWA, the back-end data store is an Exchange server accessed via CDO; by using tools like MTS, MSMQ, and ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), an application could communicate with almost any back-end database, such as a SQL Server or Oracle database.