Feature Creep, for those that have been lucky enough to have never faced it, represents the adding of new features into a previously designed and partially completed application.
The Internet Development World of Active Server covers a lot of ground and so have we, from Visual Basic Scripting to Building COM Objects.
In the Web development world, the current happenings you should be following include emerging development tools, methodologies, and integration with diverse Internet protocol standards.
In trying to understand what's happening next, take a glimpse at Viper, Falcon, and the third-party COM market.
Active Server and the development community this platform helps nourish will lay a foundation for new types of application development.
We hope you find the Active Server platform as exciting as we do, and if you have not yet grasped the fundamental importance of this set of tools, then we encourage you to search out other resources on this technology. One exciting upcoming book covers Microsoft's Commercial Internet System published by QUE. We have covered the importance of Active Server, including both in-depth evaluation of some areas, and broad exposure to others. We hope that, minimally, we have illustrated the range of technologies that come together to provide an Internet/intranet application. The many technologies-from Networking and NT Servers, to Visual Basic and HTML coding-all coexist to enable the redefined client/server world presented in this book. Key technologies include:
TCP/IP-based networking with Windows NT Server lays the foundation for all Internet/intranet development with Active Server. The importance of this infrastructure is often overlooked but dare not be forgotten by programmers. Like the freeways that we take for granted and only give negative attention to when they are jammed with cars or are blocked off with construction, so, too, is the network.
Building a strong infrastructure is the key to a successful application. As we have been in the business of hosting applications, which we have also developed for the Internet, the importance of a strong infrastructure has been particularly clear to us over the last couple of years. When clients report that the application is broken, most often the code works just fine, but the server has crashed or we have dropped off the Net. Unfortunately, although we try to explain this to clients or end users, they simply see that the application does not work. To them, the application is broken! And to a certain extent, they are absolutely correct.
The Web server, like the network, forms your infrastructure. Interestingly enough, the job of a Web server is actually pretty basic. All it really does is reply to very simple file requests. With Active Server, like the CGI-based applications before it, the Web server takes on an increasingly powerful role in the overall Internet application landscape. Microsoft has pinned its Internet plans on the HTTP protocol or Web client/Web server interface as the key to Internet applications. Although the Internet could support countless different record layouts and application transport approaches, Microsoft and many others have focused on the standards provided by the HTTP Web browser-based approach. With this emphasis, the Web server becomes the gate to your kingdom of data and services. Because of the Web server's incredibly important role, you must take careful measures to ensure that this relatively simple server application runs correctly.
So, now that we have agreed upon this Internet network standard and accepted the Web server as our gateway, we can focus on Active Server Scripting and COM objects to begin building powerful new applications. With server-sided Visual Basic scripting and development tools starting to take shape, you can begin to build applications. Active Server Pages, unlike previous Visual Basic application development environments, becomes a beginning rather than a stopping point in the Web development area, with future products and Active Server Pages upgrades holding exciting possibilities. Like the development of the VBX third-party market before it, COM objects, as well as the objects available in Active Server, enable developers to view VBScripting as the glue to tie powerful pre-built components together for rapid application development.
As has been discussed at varying degrees of detail, components and Active Server objects greatly extend the power of this new application development medium. Developers can now easily integrate a range of functionality into their applications, from database access to file input/output. Keep your eyes on the developing third-party market for server-side COM objects to continue the empowerment of this emerging development platform.
We tried to provide you with the basics of application development by Working with Active Server pages. Unfortunately, in a topic this rich, this book is actually the starting point for what probably will be a series of books on this exploding new development platform. With that in mind, we wanted to highlight some of the areas discussed and some of the areas we wanted to cover but simply had to defer to later efforts. Some specific areas that did not get the coverage that they deserve include:
While Active Server Pages is in its early stages, development work does not have to be limited to a text-only authoring tool as this book might have lead you to believe. At the time this book was written, a text editor like notepad was the development tool of choice, but even as we neared completion, tools like Microsoft's Internet Studio have reached their first public beta. It stands to reason, then, that development tools will rapidly become available to further hasten the development of Active Server applications. Minimally, you now have access to a WYSIWIG HTML editor that integrates Visual Basic debugging and help for writing Active Server script as well as integrating COM objects.
Perhaps our biggest regret is that we didn't explore more thoroughly the multi-developer project management and source code management opportunities provided by this new development platform. Although the implications of this development platform are just beginning to become known, it clearly offers transformational opportunities to integrate multiple, geographically dispersed developers as well as end users into a more efficient development model. In part, a methodology for leveraging these opportunities did not get explored in this book due to our own limitations in understanding how to take advantage of this New World. At this point, it has only become clear that opportunities exist, and we must leave it to future books or perhaps to you in the development community to help implement new methodologies and approaches to take full advantage of this opportunity.
Finally, with respect to moving beyond the HTTP world, this book did not fully introduce the capability to leverage other Internet standards such as Mail (SMTP), Chat (IRC), Telnet, News (NNTP), and others into the application development process. Although the case study in the appendixes shows a few token examples of integrating an e-mail component into your application, we hope you will not take this book's oversight as a statement that these alternative standards don't matter. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Seamlessly utilizing Mail, FTP, and other standard protocols with your Active Server-based application provides a valuable mechanism for extending the use and effectiveness of your application. You should definitely consider how these other widely used standards might play a key role in your application. Consider exploring QUE's upcoming book on Microsoft's Commercial Internet System for some of these additional features
So what's next? If this is such a fundamental tidal wave in the application development world, where should you watch for the waves to crash? A key area to watch includes the Viper and Falcon technologies, which provide a real-time message queuing capability to NT Server. COM objects can easily leverage these messaging technologies for many purposes, such as connecting to IBM mainframes. One example of this is the recently announced product from Level8Systems for integrating your Viper/Falcon-based Windows NT application into IBM's MQSeries product on the mainframe.
However, in addition to real-time messaging and queuing technology, probably the single most important development will be the exploding COM market for reusable components. We predict an exciting new third-party market taking shape that will exceed by an order of magnitude the VBX market that preceded it. The implications to the development community can be predicted by just a couple of the early entrances that were being discussed at the computer show in Las Vegas that goes by the simple name of "COMDEX 96". A couple of varied examples that can provide a flavor include:
The SMTP COM object originally slated for release with the Active Server product in IIS3.0 was pulled early in the beta process, to the disappointment of many developers. Fortunately this type of COM object and others have already re-emerged, coming from the Exchange Server group and (at the time of this book) were being promoted, even though not yet released, on the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/. A simple SMTP COM for sending messages provides only the first in what will be a series of objects to leverage the entire messaging architecture provided by Microsoft's Exchange Server.
RUMBA has provided a combination of OCX client-side objects and server-side COM objects to enable the easy access of AS400 database systems via a standard Web browser. The OCX offers terminal emulation of an AS400 application to the browser while the COM object enables an Active Server application to directly query an AS400 database. ODBC drivers for the AS400 can provide another alternative, and as always, performance is a key concern. However, this type of capability creates exciting opportunities for companies trying to reinvent the way users interact with existing systems.
Many network administrators have been following the hype surrounding Citrix's WinFrame product. This product, which comes as an altered version of Windows NT Server, supports multiple users from remote locations (even 28.8 dialed-in users) logging into one NT Server machine. With an early adoption of COM standards, they have taken this flexibility one step further. Again, with a combination of OCX objects and COM server-side objects, Citrix is leading the way in providing Active Server developers with flexible alternatives to meet their application development needs.
One of the aspects of Internet development, and more specifically, Active Server, that continues to amaze, is its transformation of the application development process. Unlike previous application development experiences, working with Active Server engages the prospective users and other laymen in the application development process like never before. The interactive nature of the Internet and the capability to expose your pages to the general user community very early in the development process has fundamentally changed the development process.
The process of developing the introduction service spotlighted in the case study found in the appendices of this book provides the perfect example of this point. From the very first prototyped pages of the new account sign-up process, the client became actively involved in testing the pages. Even before we notified him of new pages becoming available, we noticed him in the pages, providing e-mail-based feedback on problems and concerns. At the time, we found his continuous inquiries and comments annoying and distracting from what we considered our job to be. We believed he was slowing the process down by constantly interrupting our development efforts with feedback.
We had come to believe that our job was to take the design specification that we had painstakingly worked to create and then to build the application from that specification. What we later came to understand was that this new development tool had also brought a new development methodology or model into existence. Quite unbeknownst to us, we had embarked on a totally new way of developing applications. This evolving site became a living application the day the first .asp file was placed on the server. Suddenly, the client's friends and prospective end users were logging on and testing our pages at the same time we were completing the features for them.
The results of this unprecedented level of client involvement became a thorough, ongoing test of the developing application by the intended end user community. Bug reports continuously flowed into our e-mail boxes. Although this process did give rise to the dreaded "feature creep," on more than one occasion, it also saved us from fundamental design flaws that were detected very early in the process. As the applications neared completion, we found that the code had been thoroughly tested and required very little reworking later on in the process. Though it took some time in the beginning to align the end user expectations or to make sure that they understood what it meant to be testing pages that were truly alpha code, the user community loved the opportunity to be involved in the process.
Feature Creep, for those that have been lucky enough to have never faced it, represents the adding of new features into a previously designed and partially completed application.
This experience led us to our current views for the future of application development. I see a transformation occurring that thoroughly integrates the end users and development community. Although the experience highlighted the education that needs to take place for both of these groups, it also touched me with the power and understanding that will result. Users will be 100 percent accountable when the site goes into a beta testing phase, and they will be involved and will gain unprecedented understanding of the challenges and opportunities faced by application developers. This change has already begun as the Internet has provided an immediate mechanism for distributing applications to groups more efficiently and, as a result, more frequently. But this development model will further this trend in a way currently only imagined by the most forward-thinking among us.
You have reached the end of hundreds of pages of information about information. You have seen how Active Server Pages make the dynamic acquisition and display of information very, very easy.
Most of our readers are probably interested in applying ASP technology to business. Indeed, ASP, in our view, will revolutionize many business processes and models. But that is nothing compared to the larger impact this technology will have.
In this book you have seen that the Web accomplished what thousands of very talented information specialists could not do: It got an unlimited variety of computers and software to work together with some semblance of coherence. In the process, the Web liberated information. It made it more public than could scarcely be imagined only a few years ago.
This was the first great step into the new world of computer technology. This is a cosmopolitan world of information, incredibly rich and accessible. At the same time that Active Server Pages was released, Microsoft was also shipping its commercial and personalization Servers: highly capable and scalable systems required if electronic commerce is to be more than good press.
But the genius of ASP is that it's small. Everything you need to create fourth generation Web sites is right there, right in front of you, every one of you, right now. It's in there; it's in the Active Server.
You're ready. Go for it. Change the world...
© 1997, QUE Corporation, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing USA, a Simon and Schuster Company.