Top 10 Benefits of Windows Server 2003 for Developers

The .NET Framework is integrated into the Windows Server 2003 family "out of the box." This eliminates the need for any additional deployment or management. As a result, Windows Server 2003 benefits from all the advantages of the .NET Framework such as a fully managed, protected, and feature-rich programming model and application execution environment, simplified development and deployment methods, and seamless integration with a wide variety of programming languages.

The .NET Framework is the core programming model for using Windows as an application server. It is a powerful programming model with native support for XML Web services, distributed transactions, asynchronous distributed applications, and database connectivity. It also offers an improved mobile development, increased scalability, and tuned security.

Microsoft's efforts for trustworthy computing improves Windows Server 2003. For example, services such as Internet Information Services are disabled until you choose to enable them by default as a direct result of recent efforts to strengthen system security.

Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 provides increased performance, reliability, and manageability.

Process recycling allows applications to transparently recover from conditions such as increasing memory usage, resulting in increased application reliability to end users. Individual applications are assignable to single or shared application pools—with unique settings supporting different performance and quality-of-service requirements. Individual security settings for different Web application pools prevent access problems from affecting overall Web server availability.

Finally, configuration changes are dynamically applied using fully versioned XML files. Developers can easily document and share configurations with operations staff for streamlined management.

IIS "Web gardens" are groups of processes dedicated to servicing application requests. They support multiprocessor machines and the ability to specify processor affinity, increasing scalability options. In Web farm scenarios, native support for ASP.NET allows scale-out support of a shared session state.

Both Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, support server cluster configurations of up to eight nodes. This provides the type of availability and scalability for mission-critical applications such as databases, messaging systems, and file and print services.

The re-architected kernel mode cache improves performance capabilities. The new kernel mode HTTP listener architecture not only provides a robust, high performance service for delivering HTTP requests, but also forms the basis of the high performance caching architecture. Today, ASP.NET can take advantage of the kernel mode caching architecture supporting dynamic content, including XML Web Services.

In this release, Component Object Model (COM)+, an extension to the Component Object Model (COM), introduces support for COM+ partitions. Now, multiple versions of COM+ applications can be installed and configured on the same machine. This feature reduces the cost and time-consuming effort of using multiple servers to manage different versions of an application. On a single machine, each partition acts, in effect, as a virtual server. Partition sets map users to the correct logical servers.

Developers and architects can create high performance applications by using configuration options in the transaction infrastructure of the application server. Configuration options for transactional COM or .NET components have increased to offer flexibility.

The .NET Framework deeply integrates two asynchronous communication technologies addressing scalability: SOAP and MSMQ, allowing developers to build applications that are robust and capable of handling offline scenarios.

Symmetric Multiprocessor Support is substantially improved throughout the Windows Server 2003 family. Today, developers can take advantage of highly scalable hardware platforms without additional development effort.

Windows Server 2003 includes Enterprise UDDI Services, a dynamic and flexible infrastructure for XML Web services. This standards-based solution enables companies to run their own UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration) directory for intranet or extranet use, making it easier to discover Web services and other programmatic resources. Developers can easily and quickly find and reuse the Web services available within the organization. IT administrators can catalog and manage the programmable resources on their network. Enterprise UDDI Services also helps companies build and deploy smarter, more reliable applications.

Where the most demanding application requirements need large memory space support, Windows Server 2003 has versions available for the latest generation of 64-bit processors.

64-bit hardware adds support for large address spaces above 4 gigabytes. Minimal changes to existing applications will enable support for 64-bit hardware, easing application migration roadblocks.