Definition: Windows DNA

(Distributed InterNet Architecture) An umbrella term for Microsoft's enterprise network architecture built into Windows 2000. It includes all the following components that collectively provide a Web-enabled infrastructure for an organization. The DNA moniker was coined in 1997 for Windows NT. The term is not often used except when Microsoft products are contrasted to the later .NET framework, in which case DNA means "prior to .NET." See .NET Framework.

Web Server and ASP
Internet Information Server provides the HTTP processing for the organization and supports Active Server Pages (ASPs) for dynamic processing of content from databases.

COM Objects
Microsoft's COM object technology is part of the Windows infrastructure and supported by all of Microsoft's development tools.

MTS and MSMQ
Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) and Microsoft Message Queue Server (MSMQ) provide the transaction and messaging services to support online transactions between users and programs and between programs.

AppCenter Server
AppCenter provides a variety of features for managing a large cluster of Web servers, including load balancing, fault tolerance, replication and testing tools.