Introduction to .NET Remoting Objects

.NET Remoting enables application developers to use a familiar object reference approach even when making interprocess communication between two applications. The client application can create an instance of the object running on the remote server and call its methods. To pass the call to the remote server, .NET Remoting uses a channel (you’ll learn more about channels in the next section, “Channel Protocols and Formatters”). When you register your client and server channels, you specify important information, such as the protocol to use, the format of the data to be sent, the server name, and the port number that the channel will connect to. A proxy object is created on the client side to enable the client to make the remote calls and handle the responses as though the client were accessing local objects. The server logic can be hosted by any managed process, including any .NET executable or a .NET Windows service. To take advantage of enhanced security and other features, you might wish to host your server objects in Internet Information Server (IIS).

Note 

IIS hosting is covered in Chapter 10, “Deploying, Securing, and Configuring Windows-Based Applications” (Windows services, serviced components, .NET Remoting objects).

As you read through this chapter, keep in mind that .NET Remoting and XML Web services (which is the topic of the next chapter, Chapter 4, “Creating and Managing XML Web Services”) can both accomplish the same end result of enabling different applications running on physically separate servers to call each other’s methods. The technology that you choose for a specific system will depend on the requirements for a specific application.

In general, .NET Remoting is more appropriate for systems in which all components are running managed code on a closed network. This enables you to make use of the faster protocols and formats, perhaps even creating customized implementations, and to maintain more direct control over object activation and lifetimes. XML Web services, on the other hand, are useful when you need to connect to other systems that might be outside your organization or running on a different platform, accessible over the Internet.