Acknowledgments

for RuBoard

We are indebted to Mike Meehan for helping to get this project off the ground, starting at a meeting at the PDC when Microsoft announced .NET. That conversation put into motion what has become a substantial series of books on .NET technology, in which this volume is the second. We would also like to thank Jill Harry at Prentice Hall for her ongoing support with this ambitious book project.

Several people at Microsoft reviewed parts of the book: Steven Pratschner, Jim Hogg, Michael Pizzo, Michael Day, Krzysztof Cwalina, Keith Ballinger, and Eric Olsen. We thank them for taking time out from their very tight schedules to correct our manuscript. Connie Sullivan and Stacey Giard coordinated technical sessions and helped assure our access to resources at Microsoft.

Moshe Raab took precious time off from his consulting work and provided many helpful suggestions. Peter Thorsteinson, an author of another book in our series, was a valuable resource for understanding the deployment of .NET applications. Will Provost helped clarify several issues related to XML. We also want to thank all the other authors in the .NET series, because there is much synergy in a group working on parallel books, even if in the heat of writing we did not always collaborate as closely as we might have. These hardworking people include Eric Bell, Howard Feng, Michael Saltzman, Ed Soong, Dana Wyatt, David Zhang, and Sam Zhu.

As always, reviewers should get credit for improving the quality of the work; any remaining errors are the responsibility of the authors.

Robert always has a hard time writing acknowledgments, because there are so many people to thank on such a major project. I (Robert) usually thank Michael Stiefel, but this time he is my co-author , and so we are on the same side of the fence, thanking others. My wife, Marianne, has provided enormous support and encouragement for all my writing efforts. This project was especially demanding, and so her support is all the more appreciated. Thank you all, and the other colleagues, friends , and students ”too numerous to mention individually ”who have helped me over the years .

Michael would like to thank his wife not only for her understanding of his intellectual lack of presence while writing the book (even if he was physically present), but also for the associated behaviors, not the least of which was the repeated playing of music that one social critic referred to as "Das Lied von der Erde and other light classics." Of course I did not follow his other advice about how to write a book.

November 23, 2001

for RuBoard