Chapter 20: Developing for the Enterprise

An Introduction to Distributed, Asynchronous, and Concurrent Application Models

In planning the topic lineup for this chapter, I stopped and thought. The real ization that this would be the last chapter in the book weighed heavily on my mind. For a moment, I reflected on the subject matter covered in the previous 19 chapters. ^[1] I thought about the humble retraining prerequisites chapters and the subsequent foundational .NET and Visual Studio .NET (VS .NET) chapters. This reminded me of the chapters that followed, in which you were finally able to dive into .NET Windows and Web development and supporting technologies such as ADO.NET and XML. Wow ”you have come a long way.

Continuing to review some of the earlier chapters, I found several stated goals that this book was to accomplish:

• To provide mainframe-oriented guidance to tackling .NET

• To serve as a bridge from the mainframe world to the new .NET universe

• To serve as a complete guide to continued learning as you transition from being a mainframe programmer to being (what I like to call) an enterprise developer

I can comfortably say that this book is well positioned to meet each of its stated goals. Well, almost.

The fact is, there's more ”a lot more ”to learn, particularly along the lines of becoming an enterprise developer. So, don't loosen your seat belt just yet. You might even consider tightening it a bit. Taking into account ^[2] the material planned for this chapter, you are well on track toward completely fulfilling the stated goals of this book, and then some.

The topics that I have accumulated for this chapter have several things in common. For example, each topic is somewhat related to the distributed, asyn chronous, or concurrent processing model. Each topic introduces a processing model more commonly found in large-scale, multiuser, enterprise-wide appli cations. Additionally, each topic is easily complex enough to justify the space of an entire book (or, at least several chapters) for full, detailed coverage. ^[3]

In this chapter, you will begin by revisiting Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ). You will recall that I briefly introduced MSMQ during the earlier COM+ discussion in Chapter 19. This time, you will get chance to see several MSMQ fea tures demonstrated. From there, you will move on to the topic of asynchronous processing. You will receive a high-level introduction to the topic of .NET Remoting. At the end of the chapter, you will get a healthy glimpse into the topic of multithreading.

Note  

You will use the Windows MSMQ product in the first two sections of this chapter. The MSMQ product is free and bundled with the Windows XP and Windows 2000 operating systems. You should verify that you have installed this product locally. To do so, navigate to the Computer Management Console by clicking the Start button and selecting Programs Administrative Tools Computer Management (or simply right-click your My Computer icon and choose Manage). If the MSMQ product is installed and if the Message Queuing Windows service is started, you will see the MSMQ snap-in listed as Message Queuing in the Computer Management console.

^[1] Honestly, I chuckled as I was reminded of the bits and pieces of shameless attempted humor sprinkled here and there ”from the reformation conjugations to the loose use of acronyms (e.g., TEN, CLR, DICES, and CR).

^[2] Be sure to check out the appendixes that follow this chapter. I am sure that the supplementary information that I have included there will be worth your while.

^[3] This same point could be made for the majority of topics covered in the previous chapters, hence the abundance of references in the "To Learn More" sections.