Microsoft developers' conferences to
feature previews of Cairo, IIS 3.0, IE 4.0
By Jim Balderston
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 2:10 PM PT, Oct 3, 1996
Microsoft Corp. will give developers peeks at a host of different
technologies during its two
developers' conferences to be held in coming weeks, said company
officials.
At the top of the list may well be a preview NT Server 5.0, including
technology code-named
Cairo, which is being described as the "the next generation of directory
services," according to
Tanya van Dam, group product manager at the Redmond, Wash.-based
Microsoft.
The Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC), to be held on
Nov. 4-7 in Long
Beach Calif., will be the place where Microsoft releases open beta code
for some of its most
high-profile projects, such as Viper, Denali, and Falcon.
"People will walk away with pre-release software for those products at
the conference," van
Dam said.
Viper is the code name for what is now being officially called the
Microsoft Transaction Server
(MTS). Denali is the code name for a server-side scripting engine. Falcon
represents the
company's messaging middleware. All three technologies have been in
closed betas this summer
with selected Microsoft partners.
These products form what Microsoft has been calling its "Active Server
Framework," and will
be linked together with the company's Distributed Component Object Model
(DCOM)
protocols. Microsoft at the conferences will give developers a look at
more specifics of the
company's strategy for bringing these technologies together, said van
Dam.
"There will be much more information concerning DCOM," she said. "This
will allow you to do
scripting, as well as transaction against components."
Microsoft will hold its Site Builders Conference (SBC), the week before
the PDC, in San Jose,
Calif. The SBC will feature its share of news as well, van Dam said.
Beta versions of Internet Explorer 4.0 -- the next version of the
company's World Wide Web
browser -- will be previewed at the SBC, and attendees may also see
previews of the
company's latest Web server -- Internet Information Server -- as well.
"It would be hard for me to comment on the next version of IIS," van Dam
said. "But I can say
our development on IIS is very, very aggressive."
Other sources close to the company said there would be no previews of
Internet Explorer 5.0,
even though Microsoft officials have acknowledged that it is under
development in Redmond.
"We don't want to confuse people," said the source.
The Site Builders Conference in San Jose will also feature more
information about Microsoft's
Normandy technology, the company's server suite for online services such
as CompuServe and
the Microsoft Network.
Attendees in San Jose will also see a tool kit for building Web-based
catalogues and shopping
venues, to be previewed as a "merchant workbench."
The Long Beach PDC would feature more information concerning the Common
Internet Files
System, a proposed standard being spearheaded by Microsoft that would
compete directly with
Sun Microsystems's Web Network File System.
The PDC would feature new information concerning the management module
for the company's
Office and Back Office products, code-named Slate, said van Dam. "This is
an IS Manager's
management module that is attuned to server management," she said.