When Microsoft Corp. unveiled a beta release of Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4 on its private FTP Web site earlier this month, the software company provided beta testers with a minor surprise: The new service pack, also available to selected testers on CD-ROM, includes several features that weren't slated to see the light of day until NT 5.0's arrival sometime in 1999.
Although Microsoft stops short of calling the service pack a minor upgrade, it certainly is chock-full of new features. Among them are support for DCOM (Distributed Component Object Model) over HTTP; a security configuration editor, designed to let users lock down servers via a graphical wizard that is a Microsoft Management Console Snap-In; the Internet Group Management Protocol, designed to let computers inform routers when they leave a group; and WBEM (Web-Based Enterprise Management) application programming interfaces.
WBEM is an architecture based on the Desktop Management Task Force's CIM (Common Information Model) schema. It is designed to allow access to data from a variety of underlying technologies--including Win32, Windows Management Interface, DMI (Desktop Management Interface) and SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol).
The service pack, slated for formal delivery around June, also includes Internet Explorer 4.01, year 2000 fixes, a NetWare file and print services update, Telephony API 2.1 support and new Accessibility application programming interfaces, according to Microsoft officials.
Additionally, Service Pack 4 includes fixes and updates to all of the components in the NT Option Pack, which Microsoft shipped in December. The Option Pack, a major package in its own right, includes Internet Information Server 4.0, Microsoft Message Queue, Microsoft Transaction Server 2.0, Certificate Server, Index Server 2.0, Site Server Express and the NT Java Virtual Machine. Other new Service Pack 4 functionality includes user profile disk quotas, a patch that allows NT 4.0 to accommodate "Eurocurrency" and a new Compaq Fibre Storage driver.
"The focus of this service pack is on improving reliability," says Jonathan Perera, lead product manager for NT Server. "That's why we're giving it to lots of customer sites and why we'll be beta testing it for about three months."
Of all the Service Pack 4 features, Perera says he expects DCOM over HTTP to generate the most excitement.
"Today, you can do e-commerce over non-networked protocols. This feature lets components talk over HTTP," he said. "So, if you build something like a component-based extranet application, components can work over and through firewalls."
Service Pack 4 is likely to be among the last Microsoft service packs that incorporate everything but the kitchen sink. Microsoft officials said that, in the future, the company intends to use service packs primarily to deliver bug fixes and updates rather than new features.
Separately, Microsoft continues development on NT 5.0, which is expected to ship in the first half of 1999.
NT 5.0, originally expected to arrive this year, will support a next-generation hierarchical and extensible directory service called Active Directory. This service will compete with Novell Inc.'s Directory Services. NT 5.0 will also include IntelliMirror, which mirrors user settings from NT Workstation to NT Server; as well as Plug and Play support.
