You can buy Windows NT Server without buying any of the other components in the BackOffice family. Therefore, some might argue that the operating system is a separate product from the suite of tools used to provide server-based applications to the
end-users. However, there are a number of reasons why the components of the BackOffice family are a tightly integrated suite:
This chapter is the high-level overview that describes what role the Windows NT Server plays in the BackOffice environment. Along the way, you will look at functions that Windows NT Server provides to the users whether or not there are other BackOffice
components installed. There is an impressive number of services built into the baseline NT operating system. It is a rich environment that you can configure to meet a wide variety of needs.
By the end of this chapter, you will be ready to appreciate the rich environment that this operating system provides. When you understand how all the pieces fit together, you will be in a much better position to go through the installation and planning
chapters that follow. Once you start working with the system day-to-day, you may not get the chance to step back and see the other options that you have available to you.
There was no Windows NT version 1.0 and no Windows NT version 2.0. It all started with Windows NT version 3.0. Why start with version 3? The answer lies in the fact that Windows NT was not the first server/workstation operating system on which Microsoft
worked.
In the days when IBM and Microsoft were allowed to and wanted to cooperate with one another on operating systems (which had gone on since the earliest days of the DOS operating system), they decided that they needed a product that would be a more
powerful big brother to the DOS/Windows family of computers that were dominating the market. Computers based on the PC were growing in power at a very rapid pace, but the DOS/Windows architecture had been designed in an earlier, simpler era. It did not
have the robust framework to support larger, memory-intensive applications. It could not evolve into a system that was capable of performing multiple tasks at the same time. Basically, although it was dominating the market and making money hand over fist,
people could see that it was not going to last forever and that maybe it was time to plan for its successor.
That successor was intended to be the OS/2 operating system. It was a rather straightforward succession path, as shown in Figure 7.1. You would start with the desire to maintain the ability to run at least most of the thousands of DOS and Windows
applications that were available on the market. The rest of the operating system was up for rewrite, and this rewrite was substantial. It was not a complete revision just for the sake of revision. There were some substantial changes that had taken place in
the computer environment that made the old architecture seem archaic:
FIGURE 7.1. OS/2 as the successor to DOS and Windows.
In summary, a new operating system was needed. Dusting off DOS and Windows would not be enough. IBM and Microsoft set off down the path of building an operating system for the future. Future is a key word here. When you look at the design of OS/2 and
Windows NT, there is a lot of extensibility built in—ways in which you can interface new modules in the future to meet changing needs. It appears that the two companies did not want to be put into the position of doing another complete rewrite in the
near future to meet the ever-increasing needs of users.
The OS/2 operating system was born after several years of work. Although it was technically fascinating, it was not a rousing market leader. Common complaints included such things as it was too slow, it took too much memory, it did not run a particular
DOS or Windows application, there was not a device driver for my graphics card, and so forth. Many of the big industry leaders such as Lotus were pledging to produce products for this environment, but it suffered from a lack of software that took advantage
of its advanced features, and the power of PCs was not quite enough to keep up with its demands.
About this time, Microsoft and IBM decided to go their separate ways when it came to operating system development, one of the more significant events in computer history. They agreed to share source code for a brief period, but they soon started to work
hard to make their operating systems distinctive from one another to gain market share. There were now two paths to choose from in the evolution of computer operating systems (see Figure 7.2).
FIGURE 7.2. Divergence of OS/2 and Windows NT operating systems.
IBM pushed on with OS/2 version 2 and later operating systems. Microsoft did a bit of reengineering and came out with the Windows NT operating system that, as mentioned earlier, started with version 3. Neither of these products set the world on fire.
Everyone wanted more powerful operating systems, but the prices for memory, disk drives, and the top-of-the-line processors that were needed to run these operating systems were too much for most users. It would actually be several years until these two
operating systems became stable enough, the prices for hardware dropped, and the performance of hardware increased to the point where they became attractive.
To their credit, both IBM and Microsoft continued to believe in their products and the vision that some day the 32-bit operating system would be the choice of every consumer. IBM came out with a number of versions of OS/2 intended for both the
workstation and the server. Microsoft refined Windows NT in the 3.50 and 3.51 releases and defined versions for the workstation and the server. With the release of version 3.51, Windows NT had finally come of age at a time when the computer industry was
ready for it.
There were a couple of other industry factors that contributed to Windows NT breaking out from being an interesting product to a productive operating system. The first was the fact that Novell had a bit of a lag between releases in major upgrades to its
network server operating system. In the computer industry, a year can be an eternity, so people were more open to considering NT and OS/2 products than they would have been a few years earlier. A second factor came from the high-end server market as many
UNIX vendors continued to lag in their ability to agree on operating system and graphical user interface standards. This led to a real lack of common business applications that were based on the more powerful operating systems in the UNIX world, because
vendors could not afford to build and support different versions of their products that matched each UNIX operating system vendor.
NT Server 3.51 finally started to gain significant market share. If you believe the industry predictors, it is set to become the dominant PC server operating system in a few years. With the NT Server 4.0 product, Microsoft continues to position powerful
features into the product (such as the inclusion of a Web server with the basic operating system) and also refine existing features. It has a number of the other server operating system vendors' concerned—probably with good reason.
The Windows NT operating system has a number of really interesting technical features, and its history is entertaining. However, in the end, you have to ask what a product can do for you today. That is the focus of this section. Unlike earlier operating
systems, which merely provided a basic framework to enable you to execute applications, the Windows NT environment is rich with services that are provided by the operating system. This frees developers from having to write basic functionality and instead
concentrate on the particular functions that are unique to their applications.
This rich operating system functionality also helps promote standardization. One of the key problems with DOS and Windows was that every application developer made up its own rules for how they were going to implement functions such as memory
management. They often conflicted with one another, and this led to all sorts of integration headaches. With Windows NT, most of these headaches have gone away (although you still might have trouble finding a driver for a printer that sold only 50 units
and that was discontinued three years ago).
What are these services that are provided by the Windows NT operating system that help applications so much? A list of all of these features would be quite long. The following are those that are most important to general users, administrators and, of
course, BackOffice users (see Figure 7.3):
FIGURE 7.3. Important services provided by the Windows NT server.
The first is file system management. The heart of most computer operating systems is still stored in files located on magnetic and optical disk drives. Without these files, there is no operating system. There are also no applications without these
files. Perhaps you load your applications from a server, but they are still probably stored on a disk drive on that other computer. Therefore, the operating system's capability of managing files is an important part of its overall usefulness. Windows NT
supports a number of different file systems and provides the capability of performing most of the common file creation and maintenance services. The architecture also enables NT to support new file systems as they are developed.
The next key service provided by the NT operating system to its client applications and users is its integrated networking. Windows NT was one of the first popular operating systems to build networking into its core. UNIX and VMS added networking
features to their base operating system and even bundled these products with the operating system. Windows NT was designed from the start to support networking. This shows, because it is almost getting to the point where it is as easy to access information
stored on a shared disk drive in another computer as it is to access information on your own disk drive. It is not as fast, but that is a problem for the network design engineers to work on.
Another key feature of the operating system is its print services. We are not yet a paperless office environment, and there is a lot of printing going on every day. One of my criticisms of the DOS environment was that you had to get printer drivers
(which varied in quality from vendor to vendor) for your printers for each application that you ran. Windows NT takes responsibility for providing device drivers to your printers. Applications write to a neutral printer API that is translated by the
Windows NT device drivers into the commands that are appropriate for your particular printer. NT extends this basic service by providing utilities for controlling your printer queue and printing to printers that are attached to other computers or the
network itself.
One feature that is not really a major service, but is important, is the common fonts that are provided in Windows NT. People are now no longer content with the ability to get some text on the screen or on a printout. They want to make their
presentation look good and appealing to the reader. The bar has been raised in terms of what the market will accept. Having the common fonts of Windows NT is a major factor that allows you to achieve this "what you see is what your user will get"
environment. All vendors access a common set of fonts that are provided as part of the operating system. The True-Type fonts are designed to ensure that your presentation will look the same when printed out as it does on the screen. I spent many hours in
the DOS world editing documents so that they looked bad on the screen but looked great when printed out.
One area in which NT clearly excels over its competition is in the area of compatibility products. Perhaps you have a unified computer environment that runs only one operating system and one set of application software. If so, you are rare in this
world. The more common scenario is that you have one environment, your central computer organization has another, and several of the other departments have their own. You have to live and work with these people, and they are not likely to convert over to
your standards. Windows NT provides a number of services that enable you to communicate over the network, exchange information, and even execute applications on computers that are running most of the common operating systems in use today.
An important service for most users is security. This topic is covered extensively in Chapter 3, "Security Environment." Windows NT has a sound, C2-rated security foundation that does not intervene except when necessary
in your applications. It is relatively easy to administer, especially if you use applications such as those in BackOffice that are designed to work with the basic security tools provided by the operating system.
An extension of the idea of providing basic networking as part of the operating system is a series of common network services that Windows NT provides. It is not enough to be able to send a signal to a remote computer. You have to make it easy to
interact with that computer to get productive work done. Windows NT provides a number of utilities that provide directory lookup services (Domain Name Servers, for example) that help you convert easy-to-remember addresses into the numerical addresses that
computers like. There are also tools that perform services such as converting Windows NT print jobs into a format that will print on other computers (the UNIX print services via LPR/LPD, for example).
Administrative tools are also an important service provided by the operating system itself. People who worked on administrating early versions of UNIX remember having to know the location and format of several dozen text files that were scattered
throughout the system. You had to edit these to control the system and perform routine administrative functions. Windows NT provides a series of convenient, graphical tools that enable you to control the system with a minimal amount of effort. This is not
an insignificant service provided by the operating system (because a computer is useless to a new user until he or she has an account with the appropriate privileges).
I call another important function performed by the operating system application interfaces. One of the key selling points of Windows and now Windows NT is the fact that there is a rich set of commands that developers can access to perform
functions such as building windows on the screen with a pull-down menu. This application-centric view has carried the Windows family well over the years; there have been a number of operating systems that have claimed technical and theoretical superiority,
but never caught on because there were not many applications that let the users get their work done. The number of APIs continues to grow every year as more functionality gets built in (the Messaging API that lets you send electronic mail directly from
your locally developed application, for example).
This list is not complete or detailed, but it is good enough to start to build an appreciation for what Windows NT does for you. You will go over some of the more important subjects in a little more detail in the sections that follow. By now though, you
should see that Windows NT does a lot more work for you than the earlier operating systems, such as Windows, would ever be capable of doing. Perhaps that will make it a little easier next time you have to go out and buy a server with more memory and disk
space than you ever thought would fit inside a PC.
You may have noticed that there are actually two products that bear the Windows NT name. This section contrasts these two products. This will give you an appreciation of how the NT Server product is optimized for its tasks. It will also explain why you
might not want to try and save money by purchasing the Windows NT Workstation product and trying to run it as a server.
A good first question would be why have two versions of Windows NT? Both perform the task of running the computer and allowing applications to access system capabilities. Remember, having standards is important. It is easy to imagine that Microsoft
could save money by having to produce and support only one product instead of two.
The Workstation-Server combination is actually designed to meet these goals. Most of the core operating system code is the same between these two products. Microsoft has examined what each of the two types of platforms is typically asked to do and
allocated extra tools to the environment that needs them. In a sense, you can think of NT Server as NT Workstation with a bunch of added features. It is a little more than that, but it does keep those of you who just want the basic workstation
functionality from having to pay for software that only servers use. Let's look at these differences in a little more detail.
The first version of NT is Windows NT Workstation. It is less expensive and takes up less in the way of disk space and memory. This was a very important consideration that actually delayed the acceptance of Windows NT until Microsoft was able to reduce
the requirements for the NT Workstation product and hardware vendors were able to lower the price of memory and disk drives. It is now at the point where the additional functionality of NT is worth the additional cost.
Of course, you do not want to purchase a number of the wonderful services that were described in the previous section for every computer on your network. Perhaps you can get away with a single computer acting as the gateway to Novell servers in another
department. You also may not want all your users to set up their own World Wide Web servers. One should do the job nicely because you would let them have their own home pages on this machine. Many services are needed on both platforms (both have to print
and work with file systems, for example). Microsoft has tried to match the services provided in Workstation to some common baseline of services desired in the industry. You are able to add additional services (a Web server), but you have to pay additional
costs.
A final key difference that distinguishes the Workstation product is the way the operating system is tuned. Workstations, by their definition, are the interface points of users to the computer world. Users tend to be very impatient and want the
operating system to respond to them instantaneously, if not sooner. Servers on the other hand have a main function of servicing requests from other users on the network and background processes, such as database management, systems that are running on that
server. They can be tuned to listen a little bit less to the console and a little bit more to the background processes.
With the contrasts provided by the preceding paragraphs, let's look at the Windows NT Server product. It is designed to be more responsive to background and network requests than those of the user at its keyboard. It also has a number of special
products that are intended for servers that come bundled with it and that are not bundled with the workstation product. Finally, it will ask you to provide a more capable and expensive computer to make it work properly. This has been the case since PC
servers were first introduced. If you want more in the way of capabilities, you have to have a bigger box. There are a number of other contrasts that could be drawn between the two products, however there is other material to be covered. Figure 7.4
summarizes these key differences between the Workstation and Server products.
FIGURE 7.4. Key differences between the NT server and the workstation.
Recall that you need the operating system to properly handle file systems that are used to store data on disk drives. Is that enough so that you can get on to the next topic? Not quite. What is important to discuss is the file system options that
Windows NT provides services for so that you understand what you can to with your system.
The basic file system that has been supported on PCs since the dawn of time (or at least since DOS was created) is the File Access Table (FAT) file system. It has been used for floppy disks and hard disks. Even UNIX-based computers and Macintoshes have
been trained to read this type of file system, which is a sign of how popular it has become. It is relatively simple in its structure, which was necessary back in the days when you had only 360K of storage space available on those 5.25-inch disks.
FAT has had a long life (at least for the computer industry) and provides a reasonable level of service. However, it has its limitations. First, it is not very robust. Space is not allocated to provide check-sums and other techniques that can help you
recover information if there is a problem with the media. A number of products, such as Norton Disk Doctor, were created to help you recover when the operating system lost track of file segments and other things such as that, but even they could not fix
every problem.
Another feature that you might want, especially when moving into the server environment, is the ability to control access to individual files. The FAT system just puts the files out there. It does not have any space to say who owns the file system. It
does not have any constructs to enable you to say which users or groups are permitted to read or write to it. About the only feature that FAT supports is the capability of designating a file as read-only. Of course, it is easy for anyone to reset that
read-only attribute, so not even that is guaranteed.
In the early days of OS/2 when IBM and Microsoft were working together, they came up with the High Performance File System (HPFS) to address some of these needs. It permitted security and ownership. After IBM and Microsoft separated their development
efforts, Microsoft continued to support HPFS, but decided to come out with its own file system that could do some additional things: the NT File System (NTFS). An important point to consider, by the way, is that Microsoft will be dropping support for HPFS
in version 4 of the NT operating system. I guess that there were not all that many NT users using HPFS and very few dual boot NT and OS/2 servers, so they did not want to waste the effort maintaining support for HPFS.
NTFS provides support for file-level ownership and security access control.
So far, you have seen three ways of storing information on a disk that is supported by the Windows NT operating system. Although there are a number of other file systems out there that Microsoft could have supported, there is one key file system that
almost every computer will be supporting in the future (especially those with NT). That format is the one used for CD-ROM disks. There are some special considerations for these read-only devices that have led the industry to come up with a separate means
of storing information that is actually an international standard (you can read the same CD on PCs, Macintoshes, and UNIX boxes). Actually there are a few different file formats that are used for CDs (Kodak photo CDs have one format, audio CDs have
another). The good news is that NT supports most of the common formats for you (I am listening to an audio CD on my PC while writing this chapter).
One other feature of the operating system that is important to applications is the capability of finding, loading, executing, and saving files. Obviously, the programmers have to decide what they want to do and manipulate the data as appropriate.
However, Windows NT will do a lot of the work involved when a program asks to save a file. It will figure out which segments are to be written to, update the directory, and so forth. This saves a lot of work for the individual applications and also
provides good standardization for data storage. When combined with some fairly sophisticated disk administration utilities and support for a variety of disk hardware options (including such technologies as RAID), Windows NT provides excellent data storage
mechanisms.
If you listen to some of the industry "experts," the PC is going the way of the dinosaurs. Instead, we will commit ourselves to use servers owned by other people and we will have very simple display devices in our homes and at work. I do not
subscribe to this theory, but I will concede that the network is an increasingly important source of information for modern PC environments. One of the things that impressed me most about Windows NT when I first started using it was the almost seamless
integration of network data access and services with the base operating system.
I had been working with network data transfers for years in the UNIX and VMS environments. These operating systems had a number of add-on components that provided file transfer and printing services that were bundled with later versions of those
operating systems. They were functional and got the job done. What they lacked was a convenient (that is, GUI) interface that resembled that of the local file management tools. For example, the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) got the job done, but you had to
run a separate utility, use its set of commands, and then go back to the operating system prompt to look at the contents of this file or execute it.
With NT 3.51, you had the ability to use the same File Manager tool that you used for all your other file work to share and access shared drives over the network. Once you mapped a drive letter to a network drive, the only way that you could tell the
difference functionally was the icon that was used to represent the disk drive and, usually, the speed at which you could access information. This interface has been improved even further in NT 4.0 with the Network Neighborhood and Explorer tools that let
you access shared information with or without formally mapping the drive. You can double-click on the file to run or display it. You can drop and drag the file to perform copy and move operations just as on a local drive. The network file handling
capabilities are almost seamless.
Another strong feature of the Windows NT environment that usually is only of interest to developers and administrators is the applications' capability of communicating with one another over the network. This is the basis of the whole client-server
architecture. You have a number of computers, each performing specific functions that coordinate their activities to get the job done. There are a number of technical details that Windows NT provides to make it easy for applications to talk to one another
(Windows sockets, for example). NT supports most of the common communications techniques and is even pushing some advanced technologies, such as Distributed Common Object Model (DCOM), to provide the same type of cooperation found in current OLE
applications.
The server version of NT also supports a number of utilities that make working in the network environment easier. For example, you can have services such as DHCP, which automatically provide network addresses to the computers on your network to save you
from having to go to each machine. There are also tools to help you look up common addresses and provide your applications with the information needed to make these connections. NT provides most of the commonly used services for the TCP/IP and Microsoft
networking environments.
Windows NT provides a number of print services to the user. Many NT users may not appreciate what all NT is doing for them because these tasks are done in a manner that is fairly transparent to the user. About the only time the users get involved is
when they send the job and if they get a message box indicating that the printer is out of paper or offline. That is one of the charms about an NT printer, but not its only one.
What printing functions does NT provide for you? The first one that you might not think about is print queue management. Your powerful PC can generate printer data at a rate that is much higher than the printer is capable of processing. In the old days,
the application would sit and wait, feeding the printer at whatever rate the printer wanted. This worked, but you had a lot of dead time when you could not run other applications while this was going on. Windows implemented the concept of the print queue
(a sort of background process) and Windows NT has enhanced the concept. The basics of print queues are shown in Figure 7.5.
The general concept of a print queue is simple. Take the information from the application at whatever rate the application can sustain and store it in a file on disk. You then have a background process reading the files that are in the print queue and
sending them to the printer at whatever rate the printer can handle. This division of labor simplifies the requirements on applications that no longer have to be sensitive to printer needs and capabilities. Windows NT provides a fairly sophisticated
queuing system that enables you to send print jobs not only to your favorite local printer, but also to printers located on other computers running Microsoft operating systems, UNIX computers, Macintosh computers, and even printers that are directly
attached to the network. NT takes care of all the little details associated with the different standards and protocols associated with the different computer environments.
A final important function of the Windows NT operating system with regard to printing relates to the tools that are used to control and set up the printers. Let's look at control first. You may send a job to the printer that is stuck or perhaps you
specified an option that is not supported by your printer and that printer is spitting out dozens of pages of garbage. Windows NT provides a simple printer control utility with the traditional graphical user interface that enables you to pause the printer
output, cancel print jobs, and so forth (see Figure 7.6). You are not always able to stop a printer from printing by canceling a print job. Modern printers have substantial amounts of memory, which can store a lot of pages of garbage that get printed even
after you kill the print job (you usually have to turn the printer on and off to clear the memory).
FIGURE 7.6. The Windows NT printer control utility.
Another important tool is the one that enables you to set up the properties of your printer (see Figure 7.7). Just as modern computers have grown in complexity, adding more features, bells, and whistles, printers have also grown up. You now have options
to select the page orientation, which paper tray is used, and even what color to use. Because Windows NT provides the print services to the user, it needs a utility to specify the type of printer and which capabilities of that printer you have selected
(did you buy the extra paper tray, for example). The Windows NT 4.0 interface for printer setup shown in Figure 7.7 is an easy way to set these properties. You can do the same work in NT 3.51 and earlier, but I was really impressed with the layout and
functionality of the 4.0 tools.
NT 4.0 provides some fairly sophisticated printer control tools.
The good news, once again, is that once you or your administrator set up the properties of a printer and share it to the network, it is really easy for users to attach to that printer and just use it. They will probably never appreciate all the
technical details that are going on behind the scenes to transfer the print job though the network to the appropriate server and from there through the print queue to the printer itself. They will be blissfully unaware of the command set used by that
printer to tell it to print the job sideways. All they know is that they select the printer and click on the print icon on their application toolbar.
When Microsoft first entered the server operating system market, it was the outsider. The other servers were established and had all the resources (printers, for example) connected to them. To help ease its way into the server market, Microsoft devoted
a lot of attention to building capabilities into NT to enable it to work with these other environments. This goes way behind the capability of transmitting a signal over a common protocol (as with TCP/IP). They engineered capabilities to deal with the
native file management systems, printing tools, and other utilities found in these environments. Even today, when NT has a reasonable and growing market share, it is nice to be able to interface with other groups in an almost seamless manner.
NT’s capability of integrating into a wide range of computer environments is one of its strongest points.
Let's take the Novell environment as one example. When you choose the IPX/SPX protocol set (which is the native environment of Novell Netware networks), you have the option of adding services for Netware. On the server side, you can add a gateway
product that enables the server to attach to Novell drives and then make the contents of these drives available to its clients on the Microsoft network. You can also add the basic workstation services, which enable you to use your standard File Manager,
Network Neighborhood, and other tools to browse shared Novell drives in the same manner that you work with shared NT drives. The printer sharing works the same way. The Netware servers and shared resources appear on the same lists as those of the Microsoft
resources.
The UNIX world has its own set of protocols and utilities just as Netware does. Microsoft has included these utilities in their native formats to enable users to share files and printers with members of the UNIX world. The good news is that these
utilities are fairly well standardized across the UNIX world (unlike some of their components). You therefore have a good chance of being able to communicate with servers from a wide range of vendors. The key utilities from this world include the File
Transfer Protocol (NT can act as a server listening for requests and a client making the requests), telnet (which enables NT computers to log on to UNIX servers), and printing (via the LPR/LPD protocols). These tools are not as convenient as those for
Novell networks, but they get the job done and match up well with the UNIX and Internet standards.
The Macintosh world is still very important to many organizations. Apple was fairly healthy and having good sales when NT was being born, so Microsoft put in a reasonable support package for the Mac world. These services include file sharing and printer
sharing. These are the main services provided by Macintosh networks. As with all the compatibility options mentioned previously, the nice thing is that if you do not have Macintosh computers, you do not have to waste disk space or server processing
capacity to load this compatibility option.
The final compatibility option is the one that costs extra. Yes, many vendors figure that if you have the money to pay for a mainframe, you can pay extra for connectivity software. Perhaps that is not the only reason, but the fact is that SNA Server is
one of the BackOffice components discussed later in this book and it is not bundled with Windows NT. It provides some very powerful capabilities related to terminal emulation, file transfer, and job execution in that mainframe world. It also takes into
account the fact that good connections to the mainframe are limited. SNA Server lets you funnel your mainframe requirements through the SNA Server product to make more efficient use of that big blue computer.
There are a number of other interesting features that help you integrate NT computers into your existing computer environment. (There are so many topics to cover and so little time to cover them.) Take a look at Figure 7.8, which shows the conceptual
picture of how all the various compatibility features work together to enable you to integrate NT into diverse network and computer environments. Most of these tools work well, and some are almost invisible to the user once the system is configured.
FIGURE 7.8. Windows NT compatibility features.
One feature that was not mentioned on the previous main list of services, but that should be covered in this chapter is the registry. One of the major configuration problems with the old Windows environment was the number of configuration files that
were available. The idea behind these configuration (or INI) files was basically good. There were a number of ways of setting up and using a given application. I may want to have the ruler turned on in my word processor, whereas you despise the ruler.
Because it would be impractical to compile dozens of different versions of the software to match each combination of settings that might be possible, vendors started using configuration files to capture local preferences set using the options or settings
menu pick that they built into their interface.
Worse than the number of files was the fact that they were scattered all over the disk drives. Being limited to eight characters for filenames, they also might even conflict between applications. You had to know on an application-by-application basis
what the configuration files were, what their formats were, and where they stuck the stupid file. You also had to deal with the fact that a number of initialization files might be interacting with one another. The list of files that could be affecting you
included (but was not limited to) the following:
It was also less efficient to read all these values from common text files. It takes some time and training for a computer to learn to read the file, line-by-line, figure out what parameter was being set, and then read the value located several columns
away (translating text characters into numbers, and so forth). It was also somewhat risky because you had a lot of people who thought they knew what they were doing (notice the key word "thought"), who would go into these files and start tweaking
values all around and then complain when the application stopped working. Just ask a tech support person—these configuration files were a source of many a trouble call.
Microsoft’s solution to this problem was to use a database-like structure to store all the initialization settings for all the applications and the operating system itself. Better still, they enabled you to build settings for individual users.
Because NT is a multiuser operating system, I would not want to use the settings that you prefer for a word processor. I had no choice when we had to share the initialization file, but now I get my own registry key. Several of the older configuration files
(for example, win.ini) are provided for those applications that have not been modified for the newer Windows 95/NT architecture.
The registry is a tree view with multiple sections, keys, and parameters. You still face problems with people who have access to the registry and go in to mess up things. The good news is that you have just one place to look for the messed-up values.
The capability of having named branches on the tree enables you to locate the appropriate set of values. One word of caution: you can seriously harm your system if you make incorrect changes to the registry (you can delete services, and so forth). Be sure
that you know what you are doing before you start editing the registry. Windows NT does provide a graphical tool to interact with the registry known as regedt32. Figure 7.9 shows the basic registry editor display.
Computer vendors normally use the first digit in their product numbers (the 3 in 3.51, for example) to designate major releases of their products. Because it looks so different from the previous version, it was appropriate to designate Windows NT 4.0 as
a major release of the product. In working with this product, I find that they have done a lot—not just on the look of the user interface, but on making it easier to use.
What does this new release encompass? A lot of work was put into the product, and I’m sure that there are many behind-the-scenes items that took more work. However, my list of the highlights of NT 4.0 when compared with NT 3.51 includes the
following:
There are a lot of good changes in NT 4.0. Many users have tested it and say it is faster; some others complain that it is a little slower for some of their applications. The good news is that although it does not look very much like the NT 3.51
product, it still has the same basic architecture and functions. It is just a little easier to work with for administrators and user. Other than the look and feel, I tend to think of it as an evolution in the Windows product line, rather than a revolution.
This chapter covered a lot of material. Its goal was to provide you with an overview of a rather complex operating system, emphasizing its strengths. This chapter covered all the Windows NT Server features, which is quite a challenge in this limited
space. It did not cover the details of any given feature, because that discussion fills an entire book (check out Windows NT Server 4.0 Unleashed from SAMS). Here are a few summary thoughts on the operating system:
The two versions of the product, workstation and server, enable you to load and pay for what you need. At their cores, the two products are almost identical.
