Summary

This chapter delved deep into one of the most flexible and sophisticated parts of distributed application development: .NET Remoting. .NET Remoting is a core part of .NET and an extremely flexible technology. Throughout the rest of this book, you'll encounter examples that employ .NET Remoting. Chapter 11 considers some advanced .NET Remoting techniques, such as dynamic registration and interface-based programming.

Remember that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Noted Microsoft architects have recently remarked that they've seen .NET Remoting being used in all the wrong places. If components are going to run on the same computer, for example, there's usually no reason to use .NET Remoting to communicate between them because it adds unnecessary overhead. Similarly, scattering components to different computers can help if you need sheer processing power; but if your needs are modest, the additional overhead required for network communication can contribute to an overall slowdown. The best advice is to design in several tiers and then look at the possibility of locating objects on other computers, where it makes practical sense.

We aren't quite ready to shift the discussion to architecture, however. First we need to fit a few more .NET technologies into the picture starting with the next chapter, which discusses the revolution of XML Web services.