Microsoft

On this page:

Click on the picture to see the details Microsoft 1978  Would you have invested in 1978 ??

• intro • .NET • more on .NET • COM • DOS prompt • Visual Basic • Outlook

• Excel

 

intro

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• www.microsoft.com  - Microsoft Windows (95/98/NT >> Windows 2000).
• www.microsoft.com/technet/ - a way to be updated
Keyboard shortcuts:

- http://www.google.com/search?q=windows+keyboard+shortcuts -  - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q126449 -  - http://www.out-loud.com/keyboard_shortcuts_for_windows_95.html - - http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,2690111,00.html - - http://www.opc.on.ca/infosys/winkeys.html -  - http://www.bilbo.com/shortcut.html -  - http://www.labmice.net/articles/keyboard.htm -

Excel tutorials and shortcuts:

- excel_hints.html - my Excel hints page  - http://www.personal-computer-tutor.com/excelshortcuts.htm - Excel shortcuts - http://www.chem.tamu.edu/class/majors/commonfiles/exceltutor.htm - short and nice one-page Excel Tutorial

Microsoft has everything of its own:
 - development tools: Visual Studio 6.0 (C++, J++, Basic, Interdev)
 - web server - IIS (Internet Information Server)
 - database server (MS SQL Server)
   etc. etc. etc.

DHTML:
• msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/default.asp - excellent refs - HTML, JavaScript, etc.)
• msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/c-frame.htm#/workshop/author/default.asp - same thing, but only can viewed using Internet Explorer
• support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q234/0/67.ASP - caching in IE and how to turn if off

Microsoft recently produced some really good stuff.  Their Internet Explorer is the best browser on the market. xml/xslt/soap development is very good. Windows 2000 and Office 2000 are good and their use of xml is very exciting.  For example, you can save Excel document as HTML - and it creates an XML file which stores not only data, but also formulas.  You can create similar XML files on a unix server (in Java servlet or Perl CGI script) and serve them from your web server (with xls extension or simply print with proper MIME type).  Browsers will pick them up and pass to Excel-2000, which will open them WITH ALL THE FORMULAS WORKING !!!. Client now has much better way to play with his/her data and to print them in a convinient and flexible ways.

But the most exciting development is ".NET" - see below.

 

.NET - in just few words

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.NET  (pronounced "dot net") is a new Microsoft plan to take over the world by selling services instead of selling software.
.NET is also a response to the popularity of Java platform. The Microsoft's C# language is really similar to Java, although you will notice some minor differences, like using the word "using" instead of "import" :) .

• msdn.microsoft.com/net/ - .NET on the Microsot MSDN site
• java.oreilly.com/news/soap_0900.html - article comparing .NET with Java Enterprise
• www.xmlmag.com/upload/free/features/xml/2000/04fal00/sj0004/sj0004.asp - The Future of COM+ — Microsoft's .NET Revealed
• www.xmlmag.com/upload/free/features/xml/2000/04fal00/sg0004/sg0004.asp - BizTalk includes a messaging component for integration and an Orchestration engine for modeling - and all the work is done in XLANG, an XML language for describing processes.

• Microsoft  .NET's  main strategy is to deliver software as a service (with timeout when license expires).
• "Web Services" also help Microsoft products to work better with other platforms by using open Internet standards, such as HTTP and XML.
    (The .NET Framework is entirely built on XML as a communications infrastructure)
• Microsoft is funding and encouraging other languages to compile down to the MSIL  (for comparison Sun doesn't encourage compilation from other languages into JVM bytecode - although such tools exist for many languages and scripts - grunge.cs.tu-berlin.de/~tolk/vmlanguages.html)

Here is a close parallelism between Java and C# language:
 

Sun - Java	Microsoft - .NET
Java language	C# (C sharp) language  (and other languages - as long as they compile into MSIL and run in CLR - see below)
JVM - Java Virtual Machine	CLR - Common Language Runtime engine
byte code (JVM instructions)	MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language)
compile Java into bytecode	compile C#, Visual Basic, C++, JScript, etc.  (other languages such as Perl, COBOL, Python, Smalltalk, etc. are welcome) into MSIL (thus integrating multiple languages into one system) Classes written in different languages can inherit from each other and work as part of one application
CORBA, RMI / IIOP (distributed objects)	SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), XML-RPC (distributed services)

.NET encourages 3 main types of communication:
    - HTTP w/SOAP formatter
    - TCP channel w/binary formatter
    - SMTP channel w/SOAP formatter

Work with .NET using Perl:
• www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/SOAP/ - perl SOAP modules
• www.activestate.com/Products/NET/Perl.html - perl activestate modules for .NET - to compile Perl into MSIL.

 

.NET - more info

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• www.vbxml.com/xml/articles/dotnetintro/default.asp - COM and ADO and all the other Windows stuff
• bitsko.slc.ut.us/~ken/xml-rpc/ - XML-RPC via the Frontier::RPC module
• www.xml-rpc.com - some references for Web services
• www.soaprpc.com -
• www.soaplite.com/ -
• www.techmetrix.com/trendmarkers/tmk1200/tmk1200-3.php3 -
• www.microsoft.com/servers/net/ - .NET Enterprise Servers
- Application Center 2000
- BizTalk Server 2000
- Commerce Server 2000
- Exchange 2000
- Host Integration Server 2000
- Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2000
- Microsoft Mobile Information 2001 Server
- Microsoft SQL Server 2000
 
 

Some buzz-words: Windows.NET MSN,NET personal subscription servicews Microsoft Office.NET Microsoft Visuao Studio.NET Microsfot bCentral for .NET .NET Framework - consists of:   - the CLR (Common Language Runtime engine),   - the Framework classes   - ASP.NET .NET Framework SDK - CD from Microsoft - or a >100 MB download .NET Compact Framework - for cell phones and enchanced TVs .NET uses DCOM and SOAP. CLR issues:    CLR - Common Language Runtime (engine)    CTS - Common Type System    CLS - Common Language Specification    MSIL - MicroSoft Intermediate Language    managed code - code for CLR    managed data - data allocated or garbage collected by CLR   assembly - unit of files with a manifest (like jar file in Java ??)   private assemblies   shared assemblies - for security may use cryptographic keys (provate/public)   name space   assembly name   Application Deployment - simply XCOPY files into a directory. No registration is required !!   Applicaiton Isolation   Application domain   garbage collection   ValueTypes - like classes, but allocated in stack rather than heap - thus reclaimed automatically on exit of the procedure.   Communication:     - HTTP w/SOAP formatter     - TCP channel w/binary formatter     - SMTP channel w/SOAP formatter    Each object has a lease time, and when that time expires, the object is disconnected fro the remoting infrastructure of CLR. RCW - Runtime Callable Wrapper - to access COM objects from .NET. CCW - COM Callable Wrapper - to access .NET from COM.

 

COM, DCOM, COM+

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- COM (Component Object Model) started in late 1980s as an attempt to provide active links between applications running on the same desktop. The idea was that you could embed data from one application, say a graph from an Excel spreadsheet, in a PageMaker file. If the data changed in the spreadsheet, the graph would be updated in the Pagemaker file. We take this for granted today, but it was a revolutionary idea in 1989. Originally referred to as the Compound Document Protocol Specification (1989), it was soon renamed into OLE (Object Linking and Embedding). Problems:  link tracking and versioning.
- In 1996 "OLE objects" renamed into"ActiveX objects", to indicate that they were not simply static objects. DCOM (Distributed Component Object Model) was shiped in 1996 - designed to provide a remote procedure call capability on non-Microsoft platforms.

- 1997 - MSMQ (Microsoft Message Queue Server) - for handling asynchronous messaging, and MTS (Microsoft Transaction Server) for synchronous transaction processing - built on top of COM >> COM+ (first shipped as part of Windows 2000).

Windows DNA (Windows Distributed interNetworking Applications architecture) - death of client-server model and advent of truly distributed applications ("servers" have all been renamed  into "services").

Windows DNA 2000 include the .NET Framework and Visual Studio.NET, as well as Microsoft's BizTalk Server 2000, its XML-driven, Internet application integration engine, XML schemas, and tools.

BizTalk Server 2000 is designed to enable businesses to exchange documents based on XML or other EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) standards, with all the necessary routing, tracking, and transformation technologies needed to conduct business reliably. In addition, Microsoft is in the process of retooling all of its 2000-series server products to speak XML natively.

Microsoft is taking the aging COM+ component architecture and radically updating it to make it Web worthy.  XML is at the heart of virtually all of those changes.

 

DOS

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Hint:

In Windows 2000 command prompt window you can:   - select text :  drag mouse   - copy text :  right-click (or hit <ENTER>)   - paste text :  right-click

DOS (Disk Operating System)
Here are some of the links found on google using search for "DOS commands list":
• www.easydos.com/dosindex.html - www.csulb.edu/~murdock/dosindex.html
• www.computerhope.com/msdos.htm
• aquarius.franken.de/docs/system/winnt/ntfaq/ntfaq_07APR98.html
• www.microimages.com/manuals/instdos.htm
• www.animatedsoftware.com/faqs/learndos.htm
• www.nmsu.edu/~CandN/DOCS/PC/DOCS.pc_dos.html
• www.gla.ac.uk/Compserv/Doc/DOS/un501.html

More DOS:
• garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts.html - Utilities
• www.maem.umr.edu/~batch/ - About DOS Batch Language
• www.calweb.com/~webspace/batch/ - DOS Batch Programming
• www.nc5.infi.net/~wtnewton/batch/index.html - Batch Programming Stuff
• www.bookcase.com/library/software/msdos.util.batch.html - Batch Files
• www.pressroom.com/~tglbatch/ - Batch File Applications

To make your life a little bit more convenient while working in DOS window you can use some DOS tips:

To activate autocomplete:   run regedit    find  Command Processor:    MyComputer \ HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Command Processor The CompletionChar should be changed to 9 (TAB)  (right-click - modify on it) ===============================================  Creating your own commands (*.bat or *.cmd file scripting): arguments - %1  %2 ... use @ to prevent echoing the commands themselves, for example: @mkdir %2 @copy %1\%3 %2 @echo copied files from %1 to %2 ===============================================  to have ls command I usually make a short file C:\WINNT\ls.bat     dir %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6  ===============================================  DOSKEY - very convenient program - adds functionality to your prompt so that you can conveniently edit the command line, recall previous commands and use help. ===============================================  It is a good idea to have some utilites to zip / unzip the files (and whole directories):   - zip.exe - unzip.exe ===============================================  The registry entries for the POSIX subsystem are found under this path:     HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\SubSystems And may be set to :   %SystemRoot%\system32\psxss.exe The Posix entry in this subkey describes the path to the executable file used to start the POSIX subsystem. The POSIX subsystem does not have any parameters or environmental variables that the user can set. The POSIX subsystem starts whenever a user starts a POSIX application.  POSIX utilities and their source code are available on the Windows NT Workstation Resource Kit compact disc.  ===============================================  MKS Toolkit - many convenient tools (unix-like commands, etc) • www.atlantavb.com/reviews/mks.htm • www.mks.com • www.datafocus.com/products/tk/ds_tkdev.asp • www.datafocus.com/products/

More links:
• www.winntmag.com - NTMagazine
• www.chancellor.com/ntmain.html - NT Programming and Shareware
• www.progsource.com/c_windows.html - Windows Development Resource
• www.ntfaq.com - NTFaQ
• www.cnet.com/Content/Features/Howto/NT4tips - How to SuperCharge Windows NT 4.0

 

Visual Basic

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Visual Basic Links:
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/ - Visual Basic on Microsoft site
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/vba/ - Visual Basic for Applications on Microsoft site
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/ - scripting (vbscript, jscript, perlscript, etc.)

• http://searchvb.techtarget.com/ - VBasic Web Directory ( former www.vb-web-directory.com ).
• www.cgvb.com - VB site
• www.vb-zone.com- VB site
• www.vbonline.com/vb-mag/ - VB Online Magazine
• www.activeserverpages.com - ASP
• www.aspzone.com - ASP
• databases.miningco.com/msubasp.htm- ASP & database links
• www.anancyweb.com/seainfo.html - misc Internet Links

• http://vkliew.tripod.com/vbtutor.html - VB tutorial in 14 lessons
• http://cuinl.tripod.com/tutorials.htm - VB tutorial
• http://lockledge.eng.wayne.edu/be101/tutorial/main.html - VB tutorial
 

Assignment for home work - find on Internet the answers:
  What is the difference between Visual Basic, Visual Basic for Applications - and VB Script.
  What is the difference between VB Script, JScript, Java Script, Perl Script.
  What is ActiveX, COM, DCOM, OLE