Who Should Read This Book

This book is aimed at developers who have already learned the fundamentals of Microsoft .NET and want to graduate to the arena of distributed programming. This audience includes developers who have heard the hype about disconnected data, XML-based standards, and XML Web services but haven't yet seen the practical payoff. It also includes programmers who have a basic understanding of individual .NET technologies but want to learn the benefits and tradeoffs of using them in realistic applications.

.NET basics such as events, metadata, and the common language runtime (CLR) are not discussed in this book (and would make an incredibly boring rehash for most professional developers). If you want to design distributed .NET applications but you are new to .NET, your best bet is to begin with a comprehensive introduction to C# or Microsoft Visual Basic .NET. Many excellent books in print accomplish this goal (including my own, The Book of VB .NET, from No Starch Press).