Getting Started with Remoting in .NET

Remoting is a means by which one operating system process, or program, can communicate with another process. The two processes can exist on the same computer or on two computers connected by a LAN or the Internet. Communicating between two programs may seem like a big "so what," but it's a rather involved process. Here's why.

In any operating system, two paramount goals are security and stability. One way to achieve these goals is to load each executing program into its own process. By design, processes are isolated from each other—the code in one process cannot access the code or data of another process. That design enhances security by preventing one program from snooping around where it does not have access rights, and it enhances stability by ensuring that problems in one program cannot inadvertently corrupt the memory space of another program or of the operating system itself. The .NET Framework provides an additional level of isolation with application domains, which permit two or more programs to run within the same process, maintaining the same level of isolation as if they were in separate processes while minimizing the overhead of multiple processes.

Web services are probably the best known type of remoting, but they are not your only option.

While the need for isolation between processes is clear, the fact remains that separate programs sometimes do need to communicate. The emphasis on distributed computing and scalability makes this need even more prevalent today. The .NET Framework provides several method for cross-process communication, collectively called remoting. Web services are probably the best known type of remoting, but they are not your only option. In this article you'll see an overview of .NET remoting technologies that may help you choose between the various remoting options..