Chapter 1. The Challenge of N -Tier Development

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These days, developers rarely build standalone, self-contained business applications that are intended to run on a single computer. It seems that all the applications being built are part of something bigger and comprise other bits and pieces. Of course, you need not know how these other components work. The code simply has to "talk" to them using well-defined interfaces. What's more, these components can be located almost anywhere on the planet. The developer's job is to build a system using these components and to make sure it works.

Integrating preexisting components into a functional, scalable, distributed structure that operates in a timely manner and makes the most efficient use of resources is actually what makes designing and building systems fun. With the right set of tools and a little logic, developers have been able to create ever more complex and elegant systems. This book is all about using one particularly cool set of tools that allow Java developers to create distributed applications: Microsoft Visual J# .NET.

Before we delve into J#, let's take a quick tour of the concepts and technologies that underlie modern distributed systems. This chapter will also describe a number of architectural and design challenges that the rest of the book will show you how to address using J# and Microsoft .NET, and it will generally get you in the mood for the topics covered in the rest of the book.

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