Six Ways Microsoft Could Foil Netscape

1: NT momentum. Corporations are flocking to Windows NT. And while Netscape does sell a lot of Internet servers into NT environments, Microsoft's Internet servers integrate far more tightly with NT.

2: Mature component framework. Microsoft has been refining its component model for years. The forthcoming Visual Basic 5 makes construction of ActiveX components a trivial task. It's true that Netscape's preferred alternative, the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), appeals increasingly to corporate developers. But CORBA is an object model (like Microsoft 's Commo n Object Model, or COM), not a component framework like ActiveX. What's the open-systems counterpart to ActiveX? Probably Java Beans, but the ink has barely dried on that specification.

3: Desktop monopoly. Windows' ownership of the desktop creates endless opportunities for Microsoft to marginalize Netscape's client software. When Windows subsumes Internet Explorer, Navigator's days of browser dominance may be numbered. More subtly, Microsoft's ActiveXenabled Java virtual machine will bias client-to-server connectivity away from Netscape's preferred method, the Internet Interoperable ORB Protocol (IIOP), and toward Microsoft's Distributed Common Object Model (DCOM).

4: Transaction Server. One thing is missing from the list of server programmability features in Netscape's Enterprise Server 3.0: TP monitor support. That's slated for Enterprise Server 4.0, but Microsoft will get there first. Using beta versions of Internet Information Server 3.0 and Tra nsaction Server, developers are already learning how to create Web pages that run under transactional control with automatic pooling of threads and database connections.

5: Language neutrality. Netscape strongly favors a combination of Java and JavaScript for both client and server development. Microsoft's emphasis is on the ActiveX framework -- write components in C++, Java, or even COBOL, script them with VBScript, JavaScript, Perl, or Python. This strategy troubles Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen, who wonders, "Do we really want to encourage language proliferation?" Maybe not, but it's a reality.

6: Open standards. Say again? Netscape should fear Microsoft's support for open standards? It's strange but sometimes true. Microsoft beat Netscape to the draw with an implementation of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Netscape will go one better with JavaScript Style Sheets (JSS), a JavaScript-programmable superset of CSS, but not until Navigator 4.0. Meanwhile, Microsoft can gleefully proclaim itself a better Net citizen, in this regard, than Netscape. The rules are changing fast, and so is Microsoft.