Applied .Net: Developing People-Oriented Software Using C# Book

Aimed at the more experienced developer seeking to do more with the new .NET platform in C#, Applied .NET: Developing People-Oriented Software Using C# provides both a programming tutorial and a guide to the new possibilities for creating collaborative software using today's Web services and XML-based standards.While there are a number of good C# books available, this title's focus on "people-oriented software" is what gives it a unique edge. The authors first define some guiding principles of what the next generation of software will entail (generally more mobility and collaboration) and then show the advantages of .NET for such a paradigm shift. They first illustrate what they have in mind with their custom online document-management system built with ASP.NET and C#.With this example in mind, the book slows down with a quick introduction to the C# language and the .NET platform. These sections will allow more experienced developers to get acquainted with C# (though beginners will certainly want a more comprehensive title to supplement the tutorial here).Where this text really shines is in its "big-picture" explanation of why .NET is a better way to share components and functionality. One standout chapter here looks at the evolution of component reuse on the Windows platform, from the early days of DLLs to COM and COM+ and the improvements afforded by .NET. Clearly, Microsoft has raised the bar with .NET when it comes to ease of deployment.Later chapters offer some excellent advice of where Web services and XML fit into Microsoft's other server products for Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and B2B e-commerce. Here, the authors use BizTalk Server 2000 (with a nod to Commerce Server 2000 and its business processing pipeline), illustrated with plenty of screen shots of these tools at work. Besides gaining an understanding of these Microsoft products, experienced developers can get a look at the final case study here, which uses these two tools to process credit card information for an order fulfillment system.Though somewhat of a mixed bag (owing probably to its team authorship), the focus on a new way to write more reusable, more shareable software with Web services and .NET makes Applied .NET: Developing People-Oriented Software Using C# a challenging and very worthwhile resource for getting a handle on the new capabilities of .NET for architecting and building the next generation of Web applications. It offers some intelligent new ways to think about software, plus some real code to get you started on exploiting the new distributed and collaborative features available in .NET. --Richard DraganRead More