Microsoft has said it will ship its new COM+ middleware technology as an integrated part of Windows NT 5.0.
Microsoft's COM+, an offshoot of its Component Object Model architecture, is a new architecture for carrying data among object-oriented applications. Before now, Microsoft had talked about COM+ but hadn't decided how to package it or which operating system to ship it with.
But now the company said that COM+ will be fully integrated into NT 5.0 in the third beta, according to Vic Gundotra, Microsoft's director of platform marketing. Gundotra emphasised that the "official" announcement will be made at the company's Professional Developers' Conference in Denver next month.
A preview CD of COM+ was shipped out with beta 2 of NT 5.0. But COM+ wasn't integrated into the operating system and there was no word on whether it would be by the time NT 5.0 ships. There is no official ship date for NT 5.0, though Microsoft executives have been hinting at eight to 12 months from now.
Gundotra said a major theme of the conference will be how developers can build applications that will take advantage of the COM+ technology.
