Chapter 8. Integrating Enterprise-Level Services

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As we've discussed in earlier chapters, applications for the enterprise typically have strict requirements regarding reliability, performance, and scalability ”reliability usually being the most important of the three. Enterprise applications are typically considered mission-critical. In days gone by, developers were on their own trying to build these kinds of systems, with varying degrees of success. With Microsoft Visual Basic .NET, you have access to a whole host of services that provide a stable foundation on which to build your applications.

In this chapter, I'll address two major topics relating to these services. The first is the COM+ application model and how you can implement basic services through your application. The second topic is Windows Messaging and how to implement communication between systems. The material should give you a solid foundation for building systems using these services. From there, you should be able to dig even deeper into the technologies to further extend your applications.

I l @ ve RuBoard