To digress for a moment, if you had to explain a railway system your
description would start with the trains and their passengers, then there would
be security, safety, track infrastructure and maintenance. My point:
a railway is a complex system with many parts and so it is with .NET, there are
lots of branches.
I will let you into a secret, for a year and half .net was just a blur; then I knuckled down and studied the components, here is a synopsis
of my journey.
Here is a break down of the .net components
Client - Server (Classic technology duo)
Server - Server Links (Windows 2003 web servers providing the backbone)
Service - Service connections (Text, voice, images)
Client - Client (The whole point is to connect people through a range of
devices)
XML - (Powerful tag mark-up language that glues it all together)
My first thought about the word .NET was - NET in computing NETWORK. Then I
realised how clever Microsoft have been with the name because it also implies a
net � like a fishing net or a net framework. Once I absorbed this concept then
the meaning of .net slowly crystallized out of the murky soup.
Next I began to make connections. Making client server technology work over LANs
has been part of my day to work for decades. The new factor with .net is the
range of clients, Laptops, PDA, the latest Phones specialist devices only just
in development. How do they make these connections I wondered? Then I saw the
Web technology and XML providing the glue. What I have learnt about XML is that
it is a powerful tag language to organizing, presenting and enhance (HTML) data.
Then I saw an uses for Client to Client connections especially with phones. I
imagined people sending pictures, as well as text and voice messages.
I could also see the importance of Server to Server connections and within that
the role of Service to Service connections like messaging. Then the
servers came to the forefront of my mind and I realised the part that the Web
'flavour' of Windows 2003 Server can play in .net.
Next I looked at related technologies, Active Server Pages hence ASP.NET.
Also Active Directory has numerous roles including security, configuring user
properties and a search mechanism for objects.
Perhaps you have used, or seen online banking services, if so then you can
probably see the power of these integrated services. Transferring money, and
online shopping just uses the browser power, think what more would be available
if the clients were using Excel or Work XP.
To finish this section here is a real world example.
Connecting Applications - The vision
Suppose you use a stock inventory system, on its own it would be useful,
but limited. What if you connected your inventory system to your
accounting system, now it gets more interesting. The result is, whenever
you sell something, your inventory and your cash flow can be tracked in one
step. This dream can become reality thanks to XML, web servers and
intelligent clients. The connections can be made easily using Web
services, regardless of the
operating system that the application is using.
Thus utility makes it easy to check the health of a router or firewall. Check the real-time performance and availability statistics for any device
on your network.
