Rating: 
Summary: Needs to be explicit about "Visual Basic.NET" only.
Review: The front & back cover didn't mention that the book's examples are all in Visual Basic.Net. It would have been nice to know that, since I bought the book expecting C#. I wouldn't recommend the book unless the reader is fluent in Visual Basic.NET... or unless the author posts C# versions of the example code on the book's companion website.
Rating: 
Summary: A must have for a serious developer!
Review: This book is absolutely one of the best materials i have read that is written for an intermediate level. I think the author does a great job at explaining things and providing "real life" examples. One such thing that struck me was his explanation of "business objects" in Chapter 10 and giving a real life example of it, including the disadvantages and the alternative solutions. (You should know that there are several red books out there that deal purely about business objects but just beat around the bush hardly providing anything useful!). In other words straight forward information without buzz words or hype. Good examples of Threads and ThreadPools. Information that you can use in a multi-threaded application and not some superficial exposure. Great remoting coverage including the crucial examples of how to use interfaces. Bottom line: Buy It!
Rating:
Summary: A must have for a serious developer!
Review: This book is absolutely one of the best materials i have read that is written for an intermediate level. I think the author does a great job at explaining things and providing "real life" examples. One such thing that struck me was his explanation of "business objects" in Chapter 10 and giving a real life example of it, including the disadvantages and the alternative solutions. (You should know that there are several red books out there that deal purely about business objects but just beat around the bush hardly providing anything useful!). In other words straight forward information without buzz words or hype. Good examples of Threads and ThreadPools. Information that you can use in a multi-threaded application and not some superficial exposure. Great remoting coverage including the crucial examples of how to use interfaces. Bottom line: Buy It!
Rating:
Summary: Required reading for any enterprise developer.
Review: This book uses Visual Basic.NET and not C# for it's examples. If I were to list any one particular disappointment I had with this book, it would be that. However it's extremely easy to port VB.NET code to C# and vice versa, and VB.NET code is a little easier to read and understand. With that out of the way this book completely rocks. It should be required reading for any enterprise application developer. The title is a bit deceptive in that you believe the book concentrates on NET Remoting and XML Web Services; it does concentrate more on those topics than any other, but only to the extent necessary - you never feel like he's repeating himself. Also included is a comprehensive examination of threads, messaging (Microsoft Message Queue Server), advanced remoting, deployment, logging, security - everything. I'm a self taught developer and there are a lot of holes in my knowledge that I know exist. This book single handedly filled in more of those holes than any other book I've read in recent memory. Gestalt after gestalt followed as I consumed this book over the course of a weekend. Someone once called me and asked if I had seriously posted the review of the Access Developer's Handbook. (My name is, ah, unique.) It was a glowing review like this one, and he doubted that a real person had posted it. I'm a real person, and this is really my opinion of this book. If you can afford it, buy it. You will not regret it.
Rating:
Summary: Required reading for any enterprise developer.
Review: This book uses Visual Basic.NET and not C# for it's examples. If I were to list any one particular disappointment I had with this book, it would be that. However it's extremely easy to port VB.NET code to C# and vice versa, and VB.NET code is a little easier to read and understand. With that out of the way this book completely rocks. It should be required reading for any enterprise application developer. The title is a bit deceptive in that you believe the book concentrates on NET Remoting and XML Web Services; it does concentrate more on those topics than any other, but only to the extent necessary - you never feel like he's repeating himself. Also included is a comprehensive examination of threads, messaging (Microsoft Message Queue Server), advanced remoting, deployment, logging, security - everything. I'm a self taught developer and there are a lot of holes in my knowledge that I know exist. This book single handedly filled in more of those holes than any other book I've read in recent memory. Gestalt after gestalt followed as I consumed this book over the course of a weekend. Someone once called me and asked if I had seriously posted the review of the Access Developer's Handbook. (My name is, ah, unique.) It was a glowing review like this one, and he doubted that a real person had posted it. I'm a real person, and this is really my opinion of this book. If you can afford it, buy it. You will not regret it.
Rating:
Summary: Excelent Book for Planning a System
Review: This book won't tell you every single thing about .Net Remoting, Web Services, Com+ or Message Queueing, but since it gives you a lot of info on all those techs and a lot of others it's the perfect book for people who plan on creating Distributed Applications.
I have read it full now and it helped me a LOT in my work. I work as an application developer at a bank and I'm supposed to do the company workflow system. It has to be very scalable so I needed to build a distributed architecture. This book helped me building this architecture and getting it approved by the board.
Great Book!
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book...but...
Review: This is one of the books that deals with Distributed Applications using Web Services and .NET Remoting. It provides you in such a length that you probably do not need any other book. Excellent writing, examples and and every thing. The only reason for the "but..." part is that the code is in only VB.NET. It would have been nice to have both C# and VB.NET examples. Also, I could not get the code to compile with the latest .NET framework. May be things changed a bit, but not knowing VB and not being able to compile will limit and hinder the progress I made while reading the book. Still, I would still keep this book at my fingertips for many reasons. If you are into Distributed Applications and want to take a look at how Web Services and .NET can help you build the applications, you *must* own this book.
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