Jon Arking - Professional Enterprise .NET

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Dedicated to my wife Andrea, whose kindness, imagination, beauty, and patience make her the girl every man hopes to marry. Jon Arking Dedicated to my beautiful Lynsey thanks for the love, tea and the toast. And for Agatha and Columbo... probably the best rabbits in the world. Scott Millett About the Author

Jon Arking is an enterprise software architect working in the greater Philadelphia region. He has been designing, developing, and managing multi-tiered systems for over 14 years, specializing in system migrations and the design of distributed architectures.

Jon has experience programming in multiple languages and platforms, and has spent much of his career designing systems, managing teams, teaching classes, giving lectures and interviews, and publishing on a variety of technical topics. His company, Arking Technologies, specializes in designing enterprise systems for large companies in the Philadelphia area.

Scott Millett lives in Southsea, Portsmouth in the South of England where he is the senior developer for . Credits Acquisitions Editor Paul Reese Project Editor Ed Connor Technical Editor Doug Parsons Production Editor Kathleen Wisor Copy Editor Foxxe Editorial Services Editorial Director Robyn B. Siesky Editorial Manager Mary Beth Wakefield Production Manager Tim Tate Vice President and Executive Group Publisher Richard Swadley Vice President and Executive Publisher Barry Pruett Associate Publisher Jim Minatel Project Coordinator, Cover Lynsey Stanford Proofreader Jen Larsen, Word One Josh Chase, Word One Indexer Robert Swanson Cover Image Digital Vision/Punchstock Acknowledgments I owe a lot of thanks to many people for helping to make this book a reality. Thanks to Ed Connor and Jim Minatel for their patience and understanding during a very busy time in my career.

Huge thanks to my coauthor, Scott, for understanding my vision and helping to bring it to life. If you ever make it to Philly Ill have to show you how we roll on this side of the Pond! Thanks also to Vince, Sandra, John, and Ed at the Jug Handle Inn, who let a guy write a book at the bar on late Saturday nights. A special note of gratitude to my lovely mother, whose nagging and drama always kept me on course, and to my father who clearly helped shape me into the cantankerous, overbearing geek/meathead I am today. Most of all, thanks to my wife Andrea, and my children, Emma and Jake, who once again proved that their patience for me has no bounds! Jon Arking First thanks to Jim Minatel at Wiley for giving me the opportunity of writing for Wrox and suggesting me to Jon. Thanks to Jon for the chance to get involved on such a great project and for all the help, support and guidance during the writing process. The next time youre in England I will take you on a good old fashioned pub crawl! Thank you to Doug Parsons, the technical editor, for all of his hard work and a big thanks to Ed Connor who had the unenviable task, as the books Project Editor, to keep myself and Jon on track thank you for all of your help.

Finally special thanks to Lynsey, my beautiful wife to be for all the love and support you have given me before, during, and since writing this book and for reminding me whats important in life. Scott Millett Contents Introduction Computer programming and developing business software are not the same thing. Though many think that writing code is the same no matter how you do it or who you do it for, nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, youve got to have coding skills in order to land some of those fancy, big-paying gigs, but thats just the beginning. Nowadays, creating software for businesses requires knowledge of many different languages and disciplines. It requires both low-level programming skills along with higher-level, comprehensive design experience.

Most of all, it requires patience and tolerance of new ideas. Of course, there are plenty of people out there who dont agree with us. Most of us know at least one or two programmers who do their best work locked away in a geek closet, insulated from the complexities of the business world. Thats fine for some. After all, not everyone wants to build software that makes their whole company sing. Small application development will always have its rightful place in the community.