Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for grasping the material in this book, as it explains the anatomy of a portal from the ground up. Our goals are to provide a compelling vision for portals that can be applied to your business requirements and to explain in detail how this vision maps to the Microsoft .NET Framework and web services.

This book does not attempt to teach much of the fundamental knowledge and techniques that are required to be a successful and productive developer. For instance, it does not provide background information on the following fundamental topics:

• Relational database concepts

• Web development technologies other than .NET

• Networking and security

• Object-oriented programming

The source code examples included in this book are not sufficient to learn any of the products that are used for examples, nor is the code presented all that would be needed for a full portal implementation. In other words, we are not going to be eliminating any jobs in the information technology service industry by publishing this book. The code examples are intended to be illustrative and inspirational, a springboard from which you can work out your own solution.