Alrighty now. We've seen all of the code that comprises our ActiveX server, so the next step is to compile it and configure it to run under MTS. First things first, let's compile our VB project as an ActiveX DLL. I called my project BlueSand_DataLayer:
Next, we have to configure our DLL to run under MTS. To do this, we open MTS in the MMC (Microsoft Management Console) and we navigate to the COM+ Applications. (You can get there under Windows 2000 by opening Component Services from the Administrative Tools menu). Then, right-click on COM+ Applications (drill down under the Component Services icon until you reach it) and choose New and Application from the popup menu. You'll be presented with the following screen as shown:
From here, simply click the Next button and you will be presented with the following screen, which gives us the choice to create a new package under MTS or to import an existing one Since we have no existing package to import, we'll create a new one, so click on Create an empy application:
We'll call our package DataLayer:
Click the Next button twice and then the Finish button and we have an MTS package. Now that we have our package created, we can expand it under MTS and then expand the Components node, as well. Finally, we drag our BlueSand_DataLayer.dll to the right pane of the Component Services window. This registers the ActiveX server to run in this package under MTS. At this point your Component Services window should look similar to this:
So now we are ready to go and run some ASP that will invoke our ActiveX server. After we go through the ASP code in the next section, we'll come back to MTS for a moment to examine how MTS reacts to the invocation of our object. But first, the ASP code.