Written by a team of Wrox authors, this title brings a variety of strengths to the table beginning with a solid tour of the .NET run-time environment from the Common Language Runtime (CLR) and Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL). With a predictable amount of cheerleading for the advantages of .NET, the authors back up what they say with a host of improvements for easier deployment in .NET. They also clarify important acronyms and terms such as managed, unmanaged and unsafe code and how they will impact your use of .NET. (Reading this book will make you fully cognisant of new Microsoft standards, like CLS, MSIL, assemblies, Windows Forms and ASP.NET.)

After explaining the way programs run on .NET, this text turns to a solid survey of "core" .NET APIs such as strings, collections and file APIs, plus new support for regular expressions. Standout later chapters include detailed advice on designing components in .NET, plus an extremely rich guide to planning and migrating your projects to .NET. Filled with invaluable advice, these sections adapt "traditional" software-engineering best practices to the new world of .NET. The book ends with a discussion of topics in distributed computing, a real strength of the platform, with material on Web services and .NET remoting (the designated replacement for DCOM).

Final chapters on case studies provide more extensive code, first migrating an existing VB6 to .NET (and C#) and then a sample Web service for an online store written in VB.NET. Handy references to .NET System APIs (along with diagrams) will help you find core methods in a hurry.

By concentrating on the architecture and in-depth features of .NET for much of this book, the authors have created a resource that will appeal to a wide spectrum of readers, including developers and managers who will need to design and code with .NET in the near future. --Richard Dragan