Chapter 3: Key Technologies

Overview

In Chapters 1 and 2, we've discussed some concepts of distributed, object-oriented architecture, and the specific architecture that we'll be implementing in this book. In Chapter 2, we also designed a framework to support our n- tier architecture.

The framework that we designed in Chapter 2 relies on some key technologies in the .NET Framework. These technologies are the building blocks that are necessary to implement web and client-server applications, interact with databases, pass objects around the network, and more. In particular, we'll be tapping into some of the deeper capabilities of .NET, including the following:

• Remoting

• Serialization

• Enterprise Services (COM+)

• Reflection

• Attributes

• .NET role-based security

• ADO.NET

As we've been working through our explanations so far, we've assumed that you've known at least a little about these technologiesor at least that you could pick enough up from the context. As we move forward to implementation, however, it becomes more important that you're comfortable with using them, and that's the aim of this chapter. If you've not had much experience with any or all of the technologies in this list, you'll find what you need here.

Of course, most of the technologies have entire books devoted to them, and it would be impractical for us to cover them in great detail here. Instead, we'll focus on each technology as it pertains to the creation of our distributed, object-oriented framework. Feel free to pick and choose the sections you read, and to come back here if you need a quick reminder.

Note 

Later in the book, we'll be using interface-oriented .NET technologies as well, including Windows Forms, Web Forms, and web services. These technologies don't apply to our framework, but they are used to create applications based on the business objects that we'll create using our framework. We'll devote entire chapters to demonstrating how to create interfaces using each of these three technologies.