Microsoft Hopes To Make COM 'Cool'

The C++ Object Oriented Language environment is a set of technologies and language extensions for the Visual C++ upgrade due shortly after Windows 2000. It also will incorporate support for Windows 2000 and Win-dows CE, unify Visual C++ and COM++and supply the infrastructure code for creating COM++objects, said Microsoft.

COM++is the object service layer in Windows 2000, now in beta testing and due in the fourth quarter.

"Cool is a set of technologies that we have been evaluating for inclusion in future versions of Visual C++," said Microsoft Visual C++ Product Manager Jeff Ressler. "Our goals overall are to ensure that all of our development tools enable flexible and powerful distributed development. Cool is a reflection of that."

Microsoft also is working on a generic, language-independent runtime engine or virtual machine, known as CVM. It is a project in Microsoft Research group and is not related to Cool, the company said. "We will never, ever commercialize this [CVM] technology," said a Microsoft source.

The forthcoming Visual C++ will unify the C++ and the COM programming model will allow for attributed or declarative programming, said Microsoft executives at the Visual C++ Development Conference here last week. The company plans to limit C++ extensions, retain the underlying semantics and maintain compatibility with the existing C++ code. The upcoming version of Visual C++ also will build in enhanced core multi-language compiler technology.

"Frankly, the most important new developer technology coming from Microsoft is COM++and the new versions of their development tools will be important in their exploitation of COM," said Jonathan Zuck, director of technical services at Ciber Inc., a Denver-based integrator.

Microsoft's Visual C++ Group Project Manager Rick LaPlante said the team is "underlying the C++ and COM programming model with attributes [so developers have to] write less code."

The next Visual C++ also will provide easier access to Applications Servers with COM++objects, Microsoft said. Microsoft is developing a series of next-generation COM++services to facilitate electronic-commerce applications, LaPlante said.

The services include queued components, in-memory database (IMDB) components, event components, dynamic load-balancing components, security components and integration components.

Dynamic load balancing would allow the Microsoft Transaction Server to sense which databases are busy and move the component across the server farm for best results, the company said.

Analysts and developers are cautiously optimistic about Microsoft's direction, but worried that it may be Windows-centric.

"Everyone would have preferred it if Sun [Microsystems Inc.] and Microsoft could make [its Java partnership] work," said one analyst familiar with Cool.