Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS)

Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) is a component-based processing system produced by Microsoft Inc. and used to build, deploy and administer robust Internet and intranet server applications. MTS also permits the user to administer MTS server applications with a rich graphical tool.

MTS was initially offered to users in the Windows NT 4.0 option pack. Later in Windows 2000, MTS was integrated with operating system and COM, adding facilities such as object pooling, user-defined simple transactions and loosely coupled events. It is still coupled with Windows Server 2003 and 2008 as part of the Microsoft .NET framework, providing a wrapper in the enterprise service namespace.

Microsoft Transaction Server is software that provides services to component object model software to make it easy to create large, distributed applications. The main services that MTS provides includes automated transaction management, instance management and role-based security.

MTS architecture contains MTS executive, factory wrappers and context wrappers for each component. It also provides an MTS server component, MTS clients and auxiliary systems such as COM runtime services, Windows Service Control Manager, Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator, Microsoft Message Queuing and a COM transaction integrator.

MTS also inserts factory wrapper objects and object wrappers between actual MTS components managed by MTS and the client. When the client makes a call to an MTS component, wrappers intercept the call and inserttheir own instance management algorithm - referred to as just-in-time activation - into calls. Wrappers are then capable of making calls on actual MTS components. Security checks and transaction logic are performed on wrapper objects based on information from component deployment properties.