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The article provides information on the release of Microsoft Exchange 2007 server. Exchange 2007 only runs on 64-bit versions of Windows Server, however, it supports 32-bit Active Directory domain controllers. It cites that the smaller the organisation, the more likely they were to have made the move to Exchange 2007. Concerns for the installation of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 are also discussed.

The article reviews the Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 from Microsoft.

The article presents information on Visual Studio 2008 computer software from Microsoft Corp. Visual Studio is the main integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. Visual Studio 2008 supports Vista, Ajax and Web 2.0 technologies, Silverlight, and multiple versions of the .net Framework. Visual Studio 2008 is a unifying release, providing the same IDE for multiple platforms and languages, and representing an almost complete replacement for Visual Studio 2005. It has templates that offer a starting point for most kinds of Windows and web service application.

The article presents questions and answers related to Microsoft Corp.'s JScript, which is the implementation of the ECMAScript language specification program, including where it originated, why it is special, and where it runs.

The article presents information related to a web-based suite of office applications Google Apps by Google Inc. The Premier Edition, which costs £25 per user per year, is being aimed at enterprises currently using Microsoft Corp.'s products. Google is also creating an infrastructure of companies offering software to Google Apps users, trying to create in a hurry what Microsoft has had more than a quarter of a century to build. Google began assembling Google Apps in 2006, building on the positive response to Gmail. The Premier Edition was launched in February 2007. Google Apps comprises Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Docs & Spreadsheets, and a Page Creator that requires no knowledge of HTML. Google's flagship user is Arizona State University in the U.S.

The article presents information related to Mono, an open source implementation of the Microsoft .net platform. Mono was once hailed as a route out of proprietary lock-in to Microsoft Corp. According to Justin Steinman, Novell Inc.'s director of product marketing for Linux and open platform systems, and the man in charge of selling Mono to the world said that Mono essentially enables one to run .net applications on Linux, giving him the choice of developing for either platform knowing that it will run on both. Miguel de Icaza, one of the people behind the Gnome Linux desktop, started the Mono project in 2001. Mono uses existing skills, such as Visual Basic and C#. Applications created for .net can be modified and run on Linux, Windows, Solaris and other versions of Unix, and Mac OS X.

The article focuses on the Active Directory feature added to Microsoft Corp.'s Server 2008. Active Directory provides centralized and secure authorization, authentication and management of network users and groups, services such as messaging and other applications, and resources such as printers. It includes Active Directory Application Mode (Adam), a lightweight version which provides directory services for applications and uses the same application programming interface. The origins of Active Directory lie in NT Directory Services, first seen in 1996.

The article presents information on Microsoft DirectX and Open GL, the two popular sets of application programming interfaces (APIs) for developing three-dimensional graphics for computer games. Microsoft Corp. had announced that the latest versions, DirectX 10 and 9 Ex, can only be used with Windows Vista operating system but the an increasing number of hackers are proving it wrong. DirectX and OpenGL can also be used in other sectors requiring high-quality graphics, including engineering, aircraft pilot training and medical simulations.

The article provides information on design and media applications user interface Microsoft Expression Studio in Great Britain. Expression Studio was announced at Microsoft Corp.'s Professional Developer Conference in 2005 and its release would be at Microsoft's Mix 2007 conference at the end of April. It stresses that this studio is comprised of Expression Web, Expression Design and Expression Media. It likewise notes that the studio uses the same file format that eliminate various error-prone manual work. Meanwhile, Expression Blend 2.0 version is expected to be released in the market.

The article presents information on the .net Framework 3.0 software development platform released by Microsoft Corp. Computer software developers will need the platform to make use of new features in the Windows Vista operating system, such as the Windows Presentation, Workflow and Communication foundations. Version 3.0 of .net will ship with Vista by default. After initially proposing to exclude XP and Windows 2003, Microsoft is now making the new technology available by download for users of these older operating systems.

The article presents information on a lightweight XML format called RSS which is used to standardize news and other material so that updates on website content can be sent to end-users who have requested them. The XML format also enables content to be syndicated to other websites. Effectively a mini-database of headlines and other summaries of new content, this technology is also being explored as a mechanism for content distribution services, which Microsoft Corp.'s Simple List Extensions will support.

The article presents questions and answers related to Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server. About the server it is said that it enables users to improve performance by managing bandwidth. The origin of the server is reported in the mid-1990s when Microsoft released its Proxy Server with NT 4.0. Functionality. The utility of the server is reported in the form of security gateway that helps one in protecting his computer system from Internet-based threats.

The article presents information on Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS). IIS is a set of internet-based services for servers using the Windows operating system. It is the world's second most popular web server in terms of overall websites. IIS was released with Windows NT 3.51. Active Server Pages (ASP) came out with IIS 3.0. But early versions of IIS were plagued with vulnerabilities. With IIS 6.0, Microsoft Corp. has reduced the "attack surface" of IIS, and introduced a fault-tolerant architecture which enabled vulnerabilities to be isolated, and affected websites and applications taken out of production without affecting the rest.

The article presents questions and answers related to the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database management software from Microsoft Corp. One question is that what is the use of this software. The answer is that the main feature of SQL Server is the relational database. Another question is that what makes the software special. The answer is that it provides an integrated management console for the relational database and integration services.

The article reviews web page development software ASP.net from Microsoft Corp.

The article presents information on atlas, a set of free extensions that Microsoft Corp. has added to Active Server Pages (ASP.net) to provide Asynchronous Javascript and XML (Ajax) development functionality. Atlas includes server-side as well as client-side components. It integrates client script libraries with the ASP.net 2.0 server-based development framework, and is fully integrated with server-based services. Microsoft claims that Atlas is both simpler and richer than Ajax, because it provides a consistent set of application program interfaces for coding in Javascript, and because Javascript does not offer the range of object-oriented, typesafe features that .net developers can use. Atlas provides the same type of development platform for client-based web pages that ASP.net offers for server-based pages.

The article presents information about Mono, an initiative to develop an open source version of Microsoft .net that can be used to develop applications for Unix, Linux and other platforms, including Windows. The intention is that, for example, ASP.net applications could be developed for multiple platforms. Mono also provides alternative ways of developing C# components and libraries, and supports Java and Python development. Mono is a full-blown alternative to .net, and although there are no expensive licenses, the project exists at Microsoft Corp.'s pleasure and could be jeopardized if Microsoft decided to be difficult. Mono began in 2001 at Ximian Inc., creator of the Gnome desktop. Ximian is now owned by Novell Inc., so Mono has a lot more money behind it. Novell uses Mono internally, for example, in its iFolder and Zenworks applications. "Mono" is Spanish for monkey. Mono includes a Common Language Infrastructure virtual machine, a class library that can work with any language that works on .net's Common Language Runtime, and a C# compiler.

This article reports that Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDap) is used in most suppliers' directory products, from Microsoft Corp. to the open source community. It began as an implementation of the cumbersome X-500 protocol that would be viable for desktop devices. LDap is used to access information on people, such as postal, telephone and e-mail addresses, and permissions, devices and services. It is used in identity verification and single sign-on applications. But it also has a range of applications beyond what most people would regard as directories. It is cross-platform and standards-based, so it is not limited by hardware, operating system or database, and provides a basis for integration of directories within and between organisations. LDap-aware client applications use standard protocols and filters to request LDap servers to look up indexed data. LDap client applications and servers from different suppliers should not need to be customised to work with one another. In fact, beyond the use of the protocols and query commands, LDap does not specify how either the client or server application needs to work.

The article presents information related to the Active Directory. It is the distributed directory service included with Windows Server 2000 and 2003. A directory service stores information about network devices, resources and users. Essentially it is both a database and the services that allow information in the database to be located, accessed and modified. It is intended to provide centralized management of networks on any scale, from single-site to global. The version supplied with Windows 2000 had major limitations, such as the 5,000-member limit for groups. Microsoft Corp. has worked to improve this and to tackle security concerns. A directory service stores information about network devices, resources and users. Active Directory was typically used for three purposes: as a closed, internal directory of users and resources, as a local directory of personalization data relevant to an application, and as an external directory of customers and business partners.

The article presents information on the computer software Exchange Server from Microsoft Corp. It is a software run on a server that enables one to send and receive e-mail and other forms of interactive communication through computer networks. Designed to interoperate with a software client application such as Microsoft Outlook, Exchange Server also interoperates with Outlook Express and other e-mail client applications. In the summer of 2005, computer resellers launched a marketing push to convince users of the business benefits of moving to Exchange Server 2003. As well as messaging, Exchange offers calendar/diary applications, the one remnant of its original role as a collaboration hub. The collaboration role has now been embedded in other applications such as Office and Sharepoint. Exchange Server 2003 and subsequent service packs provide a high level of virus and spam protection, and good disaster recovery when that protection fails. Supported database sizes have been progressively increased, and integration both with Microsoft's own applications and third-party messaging products improved.

The article reviews the computer software Office 12 from Microsoft Corp.

The article presents information about desktop Linux. Desktop Linux is simply the Linux operating system with a desktop graphical user interface. Linux can be scaled from the desktop to the largest enterprise system, and it has done well in the datacentre, compared with Microsoft Corp.'s Windows. Most routine desktop applications are covered, with some products familiar from other environments, such as Adobe's Acrobat reader and the Firefox browser. Margins on low-cost software are obviously low, and Linux champions have accused analysts of deliberately putting people off desktop Linux in the enterprise because of the threat to their revenues. Although Linux adoption is rising steadily, a survey by industry body the Open Source Development Lab found the shortage of applications the biggest obstacle to take-up. There are few major suppliers that ship personal computers with Linux pre-installed, however, Dell can provide a system with Linux, as can a few smaller UK suppliers.

The article reports that the compatibility of C language with .net web services framework has driven demand. C is an object-oriented programming language from Microsoft that is based on C++ with elements from Visual Basic and Java. Although Microsoft Corp. is steadily increasing the number of languages supported and integrated with .net, C is the most natural fit. Compiled as managed code, it makes use of the services of the Common Language Runtime. Until recently, people from a C, C++ or Java background tended to opt for C for .net development, while those with Visual Basic skills stuck to Visual Basic .net, but according to Anders Hejlsberg, co-creator and lead developer of C, Visual Basic developers are starting to migrate to C too. C 1.0 was released in 2001, following an unprecedented open source-style public consultation, after which Microsoft submitted the language to standards body the ECMA. C's champions say that a major advantage over Java is that C was designed from the ground up for component-based development.

The article provides information on the Biztalk Server, which offers business process integration for a Microsoft-centred world. Back in 2000 when the first Biztalk server was launched, enterprise application integration was big business. Biztalk began as an industry initiative to integrate business applications and business processes, rather like Rosettanet. It was always Microsoft Corp.'s show, and now seems to have been absorbed back within Microsoft. Biztalk Server provides business integration for the low to mid range. It comes with support for many different protocols, and adaptors for leading enterprise applications. Microsoft's Biztalk deployment and management course lasts two days. The Developing E-Business Solutions With Biztalk course takes five days. Biztalk Server 2006 will be shipped with adaptors for MSMQ, SAP R/3, IBM Websphere MQ, Oracle applications, JD Edwards, Tibco, PeopleSoft and Siebel. Experienced Biztalk developers could earn up to £50,000 as consultants, or £300 to £400 a day as contractors. INSETS: Rates of pay;Training.

This article reports that the computer programmable language Java is harder to get a handle on than at any time in its history. The newcomer to Java is like a visitor to a town where everybody knows the bus timetables, so nobody bothers to print them. At Sun Microsystems Inc. in the early 1990s, CEO James Gosling was trying to find a way of developing C++ programmes that could run on the widest range of machines without compiling, and the Java virtual machine (JVM) was born. Java is both an object-oriented programming language, and a platform. Thanks to the JVM, Java programs are effectively both compiled and interpreted. Java computer programs can run on any system that has a version of JVM. Java is used to develop both large-scale server side and client side applications, including mobile clients. Java has a lot in common with C++, and C++ developers can become productive after a week's training. Java has become pervasive, except in the hardcore community of Microsoft Corp. INSETS: Rates of pay;Training.

The article focuses on Really Simple Syndication (RSS) or Rich Site Summary, an integral part of Microsoft's forthcoming Internet Explorer 7 web browser and Windows Vista operating system. According to the RSS 3.0 homepage, it is a way to broadcast online content's meta data via the Internet, thus letting webmasters inform users who read the RSS feed of changes in their site or inform applications of changes in a service. RSS began as a Netscape project to create a format for building portals for news sites. The first version, 0.9, was thought to be unnecessarily complex. Version 0.91 was simpler, but Netscape dropped it and it was taken on by UserLand Software. A breakaway group developed a version based on RDF, called RSS 1.0. However, the true successor to RSS 0.9x was RSS 2.0. From the content originator's point of view, it is a free-and-easy way to promote a site and its content without the need to advertise or create complicated content sharing partnerships. Microsoft has said it will rationalise and extend RSS to make it more effective, easier to use and suitable for a wider range of applications by, for example, adding support for ordered lists.

This article presents information on WinFX, which is the application programming interface used in Vista, the forthcoming version of Windows. In 2003, when Microsoft unveiled WinFX, the replacement for Win32, analyst firm Gartner warned that developers would need to gain skills in the .net Framework to make use of the new API. Recent announcements concerning Windows Vista, better known by the codename "Longhorn", spell the long-term demise of the Win32 programming model, and unmanaged code. Windows Vista's new approaches to presentation and communications, the Windows Presentation and Communications Foundations will both be exposed through WinFX. Developers may continue to develop applications with Win32, but the advantages of WinFX are persuasive, and include developing applications that should run unmodified both on the Windows Vista platform and other .net platforms. According to Microsoft Corp., those who can already write managed code on the .net Framework will find WinFX "like second nature." WinFX will also be made available on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

This article reports that the style sheets are used to define the presentation of HTML, XHTML and XML. HTML contains presentation elements, but these are being stripped out of XHTML2, so style sheet skills will be needed. The Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) agrees the specifications for style sheets, which are then incorporated into browsers, authoring tools and other commercial and open source products. The W3C has two style sheet languages: Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), the best known, most widely implemented and easiest to learn, use and maintain and Extensible Style Language (XSL). The W3C has promoted the use of style sheets on the web since it was founded in 1994. Its Style Activity brought together a lot of existing work, particularly on the Standard Generalised Markup Language-based Document Style Semantics and Specification Language. Microsoft Corp. was involved heavily in the early development of XSL, providing five of the 11 authors of the first XSL proposal in 1997. Style sheets are stand alone documents that can be embedded within one document, or applied to a number of documents perhaps all the pages on a website.

The article presents information on Microsoft's Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server. ISA is not exactly a server, but part of the Microsoft network infrastructure. It is best regarded as a firewall with additional management for resilience and performance. Without this extra functionality ISA would find it difficult to break into the well-established firewall market. Microsoft itself stresses that ISA can be used as an additional layer within an existing security set-up. ISA could provide a way for people from a Microsoft background to break into the lucrative Internet security skills market. Skill combinations currently being sought include ISA with Internet Information Services, ISA with Exchange and ISA with SQL Server. Microsoft describes ISA as an advanced stateful packet and application-layer inspection firewall, virtual private network, and web cache solution aimed at enterprise networks that require multiple firewall arrays in disparate locations. It is intended to provide secure e-mail and intranet services for mobile or remote users who need access to corporate resources on servers running Internet Information Services.

This article presents information on Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS), a web server that is distributed with Windows Server 2003. The Netcraft survey, which covers almost 65 million web sites around the world, gives Apache a 70% share of the web server market and climbing, with Microsoft at 20% and declining. However, the actual number of users of Microsoft Corp.'s IIS is growing rapidly. This is due to its share of the 7.83 million new Internet sites which appeared in the first six months of the year, a number "approaching the torrid growth rate of 2000, when the web added 16.1 million sites." IIS 6.0 is far more secure than IIS 4x or IIS 5x. Other benefits Microsoft claims for IIS 6.0 include "less planned and unplanned system downtime, increased web site and application availability, lower system administration costs, and server consolidation." IIS provides a platform for applications built with ASP.net, and the .net Framework in general. Features in IIS 6.0 include a plain text XML configuration file that can be modified without having to stop the server, and command-line scripting, which increases the number of servers an administrator can manage.

The article reports that ASP.net is faster and more flexible than classic Active Server Pages (ASP). ASP is Microsoft Corp.'s technology for building interactive web pages, using techniques similar to HTML authoring. It has been described as "the tool that will allow developers to build an almost infinite number of web pages with only a few files". It is intended to be usable by relative beginners, but has the potential to be used for advanced developments by professionals. ASP.net is still best supported by Visual Studio .net, but the days when it was confined to JScript and VBScript are long gone, since "classic" ASP was replaced by ASP.net. Microsoft said it now supports more than 25 languages. Microsoft Corp. has also set up the Web Matrix for ASP.net, its first venture into Linux-like community-support, development and maintenance. Microsoft also offers a selection of ASP.net 2.0 starter kits for Visual Web Developer, which use sample applications--personal web pages, club pages and simple business applications--to teach the basics.

The article reports that Exchange Server 2003, the current version of Microsoft Corp.'s messaging and collaboration software, was designed to run with Windows 2003 Server. However, many users kept their wallets firmly closed, wary of the cost and disruption of upgrading. Although Microsoft claims Exchange 2003 had the fastest adoption rate of any Exchange product, as few as 20% of user organisations have adopted it. Plans to make Exchange the vehicle for all Microsoft collaboration products have been dropped, as has the move to a SQL Server-based data store. INSETS: Rates of pay;Training.

The article presents information on C#. C# is a programming language from Microsoft Corp. designed to work with the .net Framework. It is seen as Microsoft's response to Java, which in many ways it resembles. Microsoft broke with long-standing practice with C # by inviting developers to contribute to the language; by getting it ratified by a standards body; and by making the source code available so that versions for other platforms such as Mac and Linux could be developed. With co-sponsors Hewlett-Packard and Intel, Microsoft submitted the language to standards body ECMA, which was later instrumental in getting C # made an ISO standard, like Cobol and other non-proprietary languages. Although easier to work with than Java, C# lacks the range of third-party tools, but Microsoft is hard at work developing a network of partners to provide these. C# will be fairly familiar to C, C++ and Java developers. Developers can expect a salary of £30,000-£35,000, rising to £40,000 for senior developers and team leaders.

The article reports that Mono is an open source development platform based on Microsoft Corp.'s .net Framework. Primarily aimed at the Linux community, it can also be used to build cross-platform applications, including applications that run on Windows. Mono was begun by Ximian, creator of the Gnome desktop, which is now owned by Novell Inc. Novell described it as "a commercial-grade development platform for Linux desktops and servers, which lets developers get software to market faster and more cost effectively." When Microsoft relaxed its hold on proprietary technology by publishing standards for C# and the Common Language Infrastructure with standards body ECMA, the idea was to encourage acceptance of .net and create a vibrant third-party development community. But Mono represents a full-blown open source alternative and some potential users are concerned about what might happen should Microsoft reassert its intellectual property rights. Mono has its roots in the open source Gnome project, which began in 1997.

The article reports on Visual Basic easing programmers' path for creating Windows applications. In the 19905, Visual Basic was used to build client applications for Windows. In making Visual Basic.net, Microsoft Corp. has extensively re-engineered its workhorse language to add the ability to create XML Web service applications as well. The result is a language with more productivity improvements, but with significant differences from its immediate predecessor Visual Basic 6. Microsoft dropped its "lifetime compatibility" commitments, conceding that only about 95% of Visual Basic 6 code could be automatically upgraded to Visual Basic.net, and that the rest would have to be manually modified. Visual Basic was launched in 1991, providing a relatively simple alternative to C++ for Windows application development. It offered an intuitive, graphical development environment which enabled programmers at all levels of skill to produce applications by dragging and dropping controls onto a form. Among many productivity and debugging improvements in Visual Basic 2005, Microsoft has reinstated edit-and-continue and other rapid application development features which were dropped in Visual Basic.net.

This article focuses on Microsoft Corp.'s Active Server Pages (ASP), a hosting environment or programming framework within which scripting languages such as Visual Basic, C and J can be used to build interactive server-based web applications. Classic ASP was confined to Microsoft's own platforms and languages, but it has now been opened out by Microsoft and third parties so it can be used in conjunction with most operating systems, web servers and scripting languages. However, it is still closely integrated with Visual Studio .net and the rest of the .net technologies.

This article discusses issues related to Linux operating system. Linux is an open source operating system widely used on servers. Analyst firm IDC said Linux desktops outstripped Macintosh shipments in 2002, and predicted that by 2006 Linux would probably have a larger installed base than the Macintosh OS. The winners included installing applications such as Openoffice and Mozilla on Windows for a transition period, setting up Linux workstations to resemble Windows desktops and using Gnome or KDE. IDC, more bullish than Gartner Inc., has predicted that Linux will have 6% of the paid-for desktop market by 2007. Cross-platform products enabling applications to be developed and/or run on both Linux and Windows include Qt, the Wine Libraries and Borland's Kylix. The purchase cost of Linux desktop software is a fraction of what Microsoft Corp. charges for an equivalent product. Red Hat has proposed an annual subscription of less than £ 2,000 for 50 PCs, although some say the service and migration costs cancel out the savings. The Linux kernel has been designed so that administrators can maintain the system without taking the whole thing down and rebooting it. INSETS: Rates of pay;Training.

Vignette V7 is a suite of tools for web and enterprise content management and web application and portal development. Vignette suffered in the dotcom fall-out, but having survived the shake-out and consolidation in the content management market, and with significant acquisitions under its belt, it is strengthening its partner network with major players such as Sun Microsystems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and BEA. Vignette is aimed at business and technical users who need to manage content, deploy and manage portals and develop custom-made web applications for internal and external use. Content management applications such as Vignette are a hybrid of document management and extended data management tools and can take content from both documents and enterprise data sources. Vignette also offers a number of pre-packaged suites for employee intranets, customer self-service, relationship marketing, brand management, supplier and channel interaction and applications for government, healthcare, pharmaceutical industries and higher education.

Testing used to be the bit that got left out when software projects overran. The search for 2000 date-change problems turned testing into big business, and it received a further boost when a number of large financial institutions suffered the embarrassment of having their online account services crash because they had not been load-tested for scalability. Software testing is now in the news again, as the implications of Microsoft Corp.'s decision to release monthly batches of patches sinks in. A change to any part of any system can have an unforeseen impact on any other part. This is multiplied when, as happened with Microsoft last month, a service pack includes 14 different patches. The only way of ensuring there are no unintended consequences is thorough regression testing, which essentially means putting the whole system through all its paces before putting it back online. Functional testing makes sure the software does what it is supposed to, and reliability testing makes sure the software does not fall over as it is doing it. INSETS: Training;Rates of pay.

The article presents news briefs related to the computer software industry as of April 13, 2004. Microsoft Corp. has introduced its relational database management system (RDMS). By announcing that the Yukon release will be known as SQL Server 2005, Microsoft neatly underlines the fact that there will have been a five year gap since SQL Server 2000. During this time Oracle and IBM will each have released at least two versions of their RDBMS's and the low cost open source MySQL has become a credible competitor in Microsoft's traditional low end space. SQL Server 2000 has been regularly enhanced with the kind of features and functionality that would normally wait for a major release, such as analysis, data transformation services and the just released reporting services, which were intended to be shipped with Yukon. In a joint development with Sybase, which provided the heavyweight database technology. The breakthrough into a product which could be considered for the datacentre came with SQL Server 7 in 1998.

This article focuses on computer firm Linux Inc. which has predicted to capture 30% of firm's desktops by 2006. Linux was gaining dominance on the server, but Microsoft Corp.'s operating system owned the desktop and the applications. More recently, dissatisfaction with Microsoft's new licensing terms and the sense that desktop upgrades enforced by the threat of withdrawing support does not necessarily deliver business value, have combined with lower budgets to create a much more receptive market. INSETS: Training;Rates of pay.

Novell Inc. is best known for its Netware network operating system, but these days less than 33% of the company's revenue comes from Netware. From the early 1980s to the mid-1990s Netware was the dominant local area network file and print technology. Since then, the company has been reinventing itself as a provider of "net services." Novell has steadily lost ground to Microsoft Corp. but is using Linux to fight back. In June it announced Novell Nterprise Linux Services, which integrated file, print, messaging, directory and management services. Novell began life in Utah, in 1983. When surveyed, users say that they stay with Novell because of its reliability, its lower cost of ownership and the fact that it is not affected by most viruses, which target Microsoft's products.

The article focuses on Access 2002, a database component of Office XP, which is also available as a standalone program. Although it is closely integrated with other Office components, each release brings it closer to Microsoft's flagship database product, SQL Server. Now Microsoft Corp. claims a developer base of more than 600,000, making it the second most popular Microsoft development tool after Visual Basic. Using an Access Data Project, one can create and modify simple SQL Server-stored procedures without having to learn Transact SQL. Access 2002 makes it easier to obtain and manipulate data from corporate SQL Server databases and to import or export data with other XML-enabled data sources.

Active Server Pages (ASP) is a programming framework for building interactive server-based web applications. ASP.net is much more language and toolkit-independent, although it is probably still best supported by software Visual Studio and integrated with other .net technologies. ASP allows applications and web pages to be built and deployed with the minimum of coding effort. ASP.net is a considerable improvement on its predecessor. ASP.net is compiled, whereas Classic ASP was interpreted. Microsoft Corp. has claimed an increase in page throughput of three to five times. ASP.net and Classic ASP can run side-by-side on an IIS server. It is also said to be backward-compatible with COM business components, as well as supporting XML web services. INSETS: Training;Rates of pay.

Computer network Microsoft.net is a mixture of computer company Microsoft Corp.'s own technologies and industry standards such as XML, HTTP, Simple Object Access Protocol and Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI), which together form an environment that can be used to develop and deploy web-based applications. More specifically, it will be used to create and support web services — modular applications which can be searched for and invoked across the web when they are needed. The company's products are being progressively rebranded with the .net suffix, but as changes to Visual Basic and Visual Studio have proved, this is far more than a rebranding exercise. INSETS: Training;Jobs and money.

Focuses on the C# computer programming language introduced by computer software firm Microsoft. Features of the programming language; Comparison with other programming languages; Applications for the language; Employment prospects of information technology professionals with C# programming skills.

Focuses on the HTML-embedded scripting language Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) that is used to create dynamic web pages. Advantages of PHP over Active Server Pages, another language for creating web pages from the software company Microsoft Corp.; Stages of evolution of PHP to the current version PHP4; Features of PHP; Operating Systems which are PHP compatible.