Dino Esposito [Dino Esposito] - Microsoft® ASP.NET and AJAX: Architecting Web Applications

Dino Esposito

Dino Esposito is an IDesign ( http://www.idesign.net ) architect and a trainer based in Rome, Italy. Dino specializes in Microsoft Web technologies, including ASP.NET AJAX and Silverlight, and spends most of his time teaching and consulting across Europe, Australia, and the United States.

Over the years, Dino has developed hands-on experience and skills in architecting and building distributed systems for banking and insurance companies and, in general, in industry contexts where the demand for security, optimization, performance, scalability, and interoperability is dramatically high. Every month, a variety of magazines and Web sites throughout the world publish Dinos articles on topics ranging from Web development to data access and from software best practices to Web services. A prolific author, Dino writes the monthly "Cutting Edge" column for MSDN Magazine and the "ASP.NET-2-The-Max" newsletter for Dr. Dobbs Journal . As a widely acknowledged expert in Web applications built with .NET technologies, Dino contributes to the Microsoft content platform for developers and IT consultants. Check out his articles on a variety of MSDN Developer Center topics, such as ASP.NET, security, and data access.

Dino has written an array of books, most of which are considered state of the art in their respective areas. His more recent books are Microsoft .NET: Architecting Applications for the Enterprise (co-authored by Andrea Saltarello) and Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 3.5 , both from Microsoft Press (2008). Dino regularly speaks at industry conferences all over the world (including Microsoft TechEd, Microsoft DevDays, DevConnections, DevWeek, and Basta) and local technical conferences and meetings in Europe and the United States.

Dino lives near Rome and keeps in shape playing tennis at least twice a week at CT Monterotondo.

In 2007, more or less at the same time I was proudly showcasing my hot new book on ASP.NET AJAX, an old friend of mine started investigating the features of AJAX and the still largely unknown Silverlight platform. He had just been given the task of planning and coordinating a huge migration project within his company.

He spent about ten years building, maintaining, and progressively enhancing a vertical application that had won an industry award and was aimed at some special categories of professionals, such as lawyers and public accountants. At some point, his company had been acquired by a larger group and the old application had to be integrated into an existing Web platform.

With the whole company about to abruptly switch from a desktop mindset to a Web paradigm, my friend was trying to be reasonably thoughtful. He was looking for the best available tools of the current Web paradigm to minimize the pain and costs of migration while delivering an effective, desktop-like experience to the existing users. With all the buzz and hype around AJAX (and that fancy new thing known as Silverlight), his efforts seemed to be a matter of prudence and the fruit of an innate "try before you buy" attitude.

I met my friend at TechEd 2007, where I was giving a couple of presentations on the subject of ASP.NET AJAX. To my greatest surprise, at the end of my last session he came by and whispered apologetically, "Sorry Dino, but is that all of it?" He was aware that his question might sound insolent or silly and that it undermined the beautiful story I had just told the audience.

My presentation had been about how a new age of prosperity and success was about to begin for all Web developers and architects. It included the success story of how one of the building blocks of Web 2.0 came along. I told the fantastic story of how the Web was, all of a sudden, about to offer the same set of functionality as the desktop.

Unfortunately, the Web is not the desktop.

And it will never be like that, no matter which moderating suffix you attach to the word desktop . You can label the Web as desktop over HTTP or browser-hosted desktop or even desktop in the cloud . It is, and will always be, a pure marketing gimmick.