The goal of this book is to help experienced Visual Basic (VB) developers better understand the powerful tools for remoting, reflection, and threading available within the .NET version of VB. These tools can help VB developers involved in rapid application development compete with other language developers, and create outstanding professional applications.
Microsoft defines remoting as a way to “provide a rich and extensible framework for objects living in different AppDomains” (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dndotnet/html/introremoting.asp). Basically, remoting allows applications to work across application domains, which allows the application to take full advantage of remote resources in networked environments. Reflection is the tool that provides object manipulation at runtime. Reflection determines how many constructors a type has, and what the parameters are. It also lets a developer dynamically create and invoke types. Threading is the ability of an application to process more than one instruction at a given time.
The authors point out that VB was not originally intended to solve the complex problems of today. However, with the release of a .NET version, developers not only had to learn the object-oriented paradigm, but they also had to learn the .NET libraries, common language runtime (CLR), and other language changes. The authors use remoting, reflection, and threading as a way to help VB developers create powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use applications. The book provides an overview of why the authors feel that these three topics belong in the same book, and stresses the importance of learning, understanding, and using the topics responsibly within applications. The book consists of 19 chapters, clearly divided between the three topics. The first part contains six chapters that introduce, explain, and expand on remoting. The first couple of chapters in this part are written clearly enough that novice developers would understand what remoting has to offer for applications. The next part, also six chapters, covers reflection. The final grouping of seven chapters is on threading.
Most chapters contain definitions, introductions, easy-to-understand real-life examples, and source code snippets. The authors include notes about when language error messages will be returned. If the message is incorrect, the authors explain what the message should have stated. To help readers better understand the advantages and limitations of the topics presented, the authors include summaries and example comparisons to other programming languages.
The book is intended for practicing VB .NET developers, but, with its clearly written and easy-to-understand chapters, it is also suitable for advanced programming students or readers with a basic knowledge of VB .NET. The book is also suitable for self-instruction, providing a good overview and a starting point for developers wanting to add remoting, reflection, and threading to their applications.
