Chapter 11. Advanced Remoting Techniques

.NET Remoting is a remarkable topic. Just when you think you've finally mastered every aspect, a new dimension unfolds. At its simplest, .NET Remoting requires little more than a MarshalByRefObject and a configuration file. At its most complex, .NET Remoting enables you to build your own custom pieces of its infrastructure, such as sinks that compress data or channels that pass messages over SMTP. This sort of low-level grunt work rarely pays off quite simply, it's time-consuming, error-prone, and difficult to do correctly. With most enterprise applications, you can't afford to introduce new vulnerabilities and security headaches. Instead, you should let hardened Microsoft programmers create the plumbing for you.

That said, there are still several important topics that we haven't considered yet, which can help you make the jump from creating remote components to designing complete .NET Remoting solutions. These include topics such as remote component versioning and interface-based programming. This chapter examines these issues and identifies some techniques for coordinating remote objects through dynamic registration and publication.