Chapter 7. Creating the Logical Design

Terms you'll need to understand:

• COM Interop

• Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)

• Enterprise Services

• State management

• Tracing and logging

• Internationalization and localization

• Asynchronous processing

Techniques you'll need to master:

• Choosing a strategy for asynchronous programming

• Deciding how to manage application state

• Choosing between a Web browser and a Windows Forms client

• Knowing what items should be considered when creating a multinational user interface

• Securing an application

• Choosing between XML Web Services and .NET Remoting

• Validating a logical design based on the eight nonfunctional requirements: performance, availability, security, scalability, maintainability, accessibility, deployability, and extensibility

In the predecessor to this exam, the 70-100, you were concerned with questions such as "How many tiers do I use?" and design questions that asked simply "Web or Windows?" Well, times change. In .NET, the concept of designing in layers is practically a default (although I'll touch on the options briefly), and you have choices that extend beyond just "Web or Windows," including solutions that are a mixture of both.

Keep in mind that there need not be only one, all-encompassing architectural diagram. Just as a house has separate drawings for the structure, the plumbing, and the electrical system as well as various external views, so you might have separate schematics, one for exception-handling, one for data, and one high-level, "fits on a single page" diagram.

As I've said before, the purpose of this book is not to teach you "how" to implement some of the features discussed. There are virtually no code samples anywhere in the book. The goal is to teach you "when" and "why" to use a certain tool, practice, or .NET feature in a solution. This chapter in particular has a lot of material to cover in a limited space. Therefore, I have supplied a ton of useful links in the chapter material and in the "Need to Know More?" section at the end of the chapter. The time you have allotted for study will determine how much of this follow-up material you read. In this way, this book can serve double duty, both as an exam prep book and as a cross-reference for more detail on a particular topic.

In the following section, take a look at how to translate the words of requirements and specifications into "boxes and lines."