Microsoft Distributed Object Technology

by Paul Greenfield

Distributed computing has been a seductive, but mostly elusive, ideal for the computing industry for decades. Lower costs and reduced dependence on central systems are two reasons why the idea of distributed processing and data out into the field where they are actually used have been attractive to many companies. However, organizations that attempted to construct such systems soon found out that building reliable and robust distributed systems was a difficult task with many technical challenges. Distributed object technology is finally turning this vision into a widespread and successful reality. The technology is now sufficiently mature that some types of distributed systems can be built at moderate cost and with a reasonable chance of success by average programmers and organizations. The deep technical challenges may still exist, but the rocket science needed to resolve these issues has been neatly packaged by the technology vendors and is available through simple procedure calls. The result is that distributed systems are moving into the mainstream and becoming the recommended way to build typical commercial applications.