Building enterprise-scale distributed applications is incredibly difficult. Microsoft built COM+ to help, but most developers don't understand it well enough to achieve their goals. In Transactional COM+, Tim Ewald gives developers the comprehensive foundation they need to build business-critical systems with COM+. Ewald explains exactly what problems COM+ aims to solve -- including why it is so difficult to build scalable systems using traditional object-oriented techniques, and how object-oriented style must change in order to build enterprise-scale distributed systems. Next, Ewald introduces COM+ in detail, explaining why COM+ works the way it does, and what the technology's behavior implies about designing effective systems with COM+. Understand how COM+ exposes runtime services to developers; how to leverage application server technologies in the COM+ environment; and the key up-front design decisions you need to make to achieve maximum performance and scalability. Throughout the book, Ewald presents concrete guidelines and best practices for COM+ development -- and shows exactly what common mistakes to avoid. For enterprise developers working on Windows 2000 platforms, there's never been a more valuable resource. For all enterprise developers and designers who are familiar with COM and are now seeking to build distributed systems with COM+ and Windows 2000.