Chapter 19. Microsoft Case Studies

A daunting gap exists between understanding the technologies that support distributed applications and being able to implement an end-to-end solution. The average distributed application comprises hundreds or thousands of lines of code, split into distinct layers and partitioned over multiple computers. Decisions that affect deployment, security, and scalability are made at every level of distributed application programming, and it's difficult to choose correctly until you've lived through the full design-to-deployment process at least once.

There is one way to pare down the learning curve, however, and that's by poring through the gold standard of distributed application code. I encourage you to examine some of the excellent platform samples available from Microsoft after you've finished reading the case studies in this book. You'll find that many of these samples are long and even tedious but they are invaluable examples of how to ruthlessly apply the best practices I've explained throughout the previous 18 chapters. In this chapter, I summarize several of these samples, discuss what technologies they demonstrate, and identify where you can find them. Enjoy!

Note

This chapter focuses on full-scale case studies. However, the Internet is also home to many other types of resources, including sites that provide code snippets that can help you learn individual topics. Some of the best are at http://www.gotdotnet.com/quickstart/howto and http://www.gotdotnet.com/quickstart. Although the examples you'll find there are basic, they provide a useful starting point for learning new material.