Who This Book Is For

This book is for developers with a moderate level of skill who are looking to create n-tier applications. Maybe you have been developing in Visual Basic 6 and your company wants to move to distributed applications using Visual Basic .NET, but you do not know where to begin. You do not even need to be developing n-tier applications—maybe you just need a good introduction to business rules and how to handle them. Perhaps you need to convert an existing application so that it is available as a Web service. If you are in any of these situations, then this book is for you. You will find a wealth of information to help you with any of these goals, and in the process you will build a working n-tier application.

Before reading this book, you should have a working knowledge of Visual Basic .NET and the .NET Framework in general. However, you do not need to have an advanced understanding of objects, n-tier application design, or application architecture. If you do, so much the better, but if you do not, you will learn the concepts you need by reading this book.