Professional Visual Basic® 2008

Chapter 29. Remoting

Remoting is the .NET technology that enables code in one application domain (AppDomain) to call into the methods and properties of objects running in another application domain. A major use of remoting is in the classic n-tier desktop approach, where presentation code on the desktop needs to access objects running on a server somewhere on the network. Another primary use for remoting is when code in ASP.NET Web Forms or Web Services needs to call objects running on an application server somewhere else on the network. In short, remoting is the technology to use when your n-tier code needs to talk to the business or data tier that is running on an application server.

Remoting is conceptually somewhat similar to Web services. Both remoting and Web services are TCP/IP-based technologies that enable communication between different machines over an IP network. This means that they both pass through firewalls, and they both provide stateless and connectionless communication between machines. These two technologies share many of the same principles.

Note

It is important to recognize that Microsoft has merged the functionality of remoting, Web services, enterprise services, and MSMQ (Microsoft Message Queue) into the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) — the next generation of the technologies. You can find more information on WCF in Chapter 32.

When working with XML Web Services, you will find that the biggest problem with SOAP — Simple Object Access Protocol — is that ...