Customer Reviews

Advanced .NET Remoting (C# Edition)

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Finally, a book that's not all fluff. I didn't need another book to go over the .Net language and framework at a high (Beginners level) AGAIN, like so many other books that are out there. I needed some real information on how to implement this VERY important technology that somehow seems to have been glossed over in lieu of Web services. I work for a consulting company that continually creates intranet applications for some major financial players and up until now we've been using a Web based model. Well now we are using .Net remoting with windows forms and it is like night and Day. Ingo Rammer covers all of the important topics and methods that you (the professional developer) will need to know. It's thorough, it's clear ,it's concise, and it's directly to the point. Each topic is clearly explained and all of his examples are easy(enough ) to follow. Ever serious developer must have a copy of this on his book shelf. Ingo even directly answered some questions I had by email that saved me hours of needless work. 5 STARS (I'd give it 10 if I could)

I agree with the reviewer who was confused about all the positive reviews. It's a very linear book that oversimplifies a very tricky subject. As you're reading along the examples seems to make everything clear. Then you realize that the knowledge gained is superficial. Tcp channels are mostly non-existant and working with configuration files, is not only lacking, the first example simply has wrong, or just confusing, information. Soapsuds is not well covered either and requires outside reading. In fact this is true in many areas.

It's a strange hybrid book. The beginning chapters are rudimentary, even sketchy, and the second half is overly detailed in a way that I found hard to learn from. There should be more real world examples. There are some things I've learned and some of the advanced examples are useful but it's not a book I'd heartily recommend. Finally, for me, this books organization distracts from it's use as a .net remoting reference.

Distributed computing in the .NET world is achieved via Remoting; that is all that is covered here with no unnecessary introductions to the Framework or other parts of it. This easy to read book clearly demonstrates that the author is not only an expert on Remoting but that he has an excellent understanding on distributed technologies in general (design of & past approaches).

Everything on Remoting is covered in the first part of the book (server/client activated objects, lifetime management issues, SoapSuds, config files, hosting in IIS and security, versioning, asynchronous calls etc) which is basically the first 6 chapters. The remainder 5 chapters go deeper than what most of us will venture (extending a chosen layer, custom sink and remoting proxy creation, developing your own transport channel etc).

If we want to knit-pick we could complain about the focus being entirely on distributed apps instead of describing good practices for inter-process communication on the same PC only. This was easily achieved with ActiveX Exes (out-of-proc servers) in COM and now with .NET requires Remoting.

Finally, the code used in the numerous examples can be downloaded from the book's website in both VB.NET & C#. If you are still looking for answers to particular Remoting probs after reading the book, you will find Ingo at the remoting newsgroup 'killing' all queries submitted.

Amazingly insightful book that goes well beyond the documentation in explaining the underpinnings of .NET remoting. Very concise and thoroughly understandable examples and source code. If you're a .NET developer or architect and want to understand the real impact of .NET on distributed systems, this is the only book available to guide you. Ingo has spent some time down in the internals of .NET remoting and both his book and his website, www.dotnetremoting.cc, clearly set the standard for grasping the true impact of the .NET framework.
Well done!!...

This has to be one of the best .NET books I have read. It goes way beyond the documentation and explains Remoting in a very clear and concise manner. Ingo Rammer points out pros/cons of the various remoting techniques and offers solutions/suggestions to common problems. He also explains the advanced details in a way that even I could understand ;-). I would recommend this book to anyone who plans on building applications with .NET.

What I love about this book is the fact that it shows not only working examples but also examples that seem intuitive and correct but are indeed wrong. In other words, the author tells how _not_ to program and why, which is very important.

When building a distributed application, normal programming rules don't apply. Networks get disconnected, servers or clients "die", object serialization is used differently, and remote event handling is tricky. This books covers all of that, and much more.

Aside from being a #1 guide to .net remoting this book should be used as an example on how to write programming volumes with words 'advanced' and 'professional' in the title.

Around 400 pages with absolutely 0% beginner material and no useless content is what i expect when i buy an 'advanced' book. And its exactly what what this one is.

Good job Mr.Rammer. Will be checking out all your publications in the future.

Update:
I've been writing a rather contrived remoting based application and the chapters 7, 8 and 9 have been really worth it for me. However, these chapters give a little too brief coverage of MessageSinks and underlying plumbing. I do appreciate the strong focus on details, but so many things are left unexplained that it becomes really frustrating if you are trying to really understand what's going on.
One particular problem in my application was to forward the threads CurrentPrincipal to the thread on the remoting server via MessageSinks. I still am not sure exactly why I am using ClientChannelSink vs just doing it with IMessageSink... previous chapters lead you to believe that IMessageSink is designed for something like this. This is just one example and there are other instances where a similar thing might throw you off a bit. Nevertheless, if you are looking at a guide to just using Remoting (not playing around with its plumbing) you wont go wrong with this book.

I have read many books on .NET but this has to be one of the best there is. Ingo Rammer delivers a detailed explanation of every aspect of .NET remoting in a clear and concise manner. He has tailored his writing to the more advanced developer but somehow still manages to write in a way that doesn't come across as either dry or confusing.

The first half of the book covers everything you need to know for developing distributed applications with the .NET Framework. The second part gives you a thorough technical insight that will allow you to really understand what's happening behind the scenes and how you can tap into customizing the framework to suit your exact needs. I found this to be very effective.

One of the things that really stands out are the numerous examples that he has following every section throughout the book. He has obviously spent a great deal of time on these examples and, unlike a lot of other books out there, has made sure that they compile and execute as expected.

...

I've been working with XML web services for a long time and also have gone through lot of text regarding .NET remoting. Ingo Rammer's book discusses remoting in a very well organized and chronological way making it highly understandable. Advanced .NET Remoting is filled with examples, sample code, screenshots and figures to explain the inter-communication between process boundaries. Ingo has discussed simple topics such as the evolution of how remoting get to what it is now as well as in-depth explanation of refactoring the event handlers. This book helped me understanding the message sinks and how to create custom channels, topics which I didn't feel I grasped fully from readings prior to this book.
I agree with other reviewers that word advanced doesn't fully depict the spirit of this book as it discusses remoting from scratch and doesn't expect much of prior experience. With Indigo round the corner and WSE 3.0 released, this book along with web services knowledge will explain how dramatically communication standards are evolving, for good, making distributed application development easier, reliable and standardized.

-Adnan Masood
MCSD.NET, MCAD.NET

This is a well-written, well organized and extremely useful book. If you are new to .NET remoting don't let the "advanced" in the title scare you off - you must understand at least the material in the first half of this book (chapters 1 to 5) to use remoting sensibly.

I sat down with this book, read the first half and selected later chapters in about two hours, and all the issues that had cropped up in my first attempt to use remoting were resolved.

A later remoting problem triggered by installation of .NET framework version 1.1 was resolved by information on the author's website.