In the previous sections of this book, you have seen how to build Microsoft Visual C# applications that run in the Microsoft Windows environment on the desktop. These applications typically allow a user to gain access to a database by using ADO.NET. In this final part of the book, you will consider the world of Web applications. These are applications that are accessed over the Internet. Rather than using your desktop, Web applications rely on a Web browser to provide the user interface.

In the first three chapters of this part, you will examine the classes provided by the Microsoft .NET Framework for building Web applications. You will learn about the architecture of ASP.NET, Web forms, and Server controls. You will see that the structure of applications that execute over the Web are different from those that run on the desktop, and you will be shown some best practices for building efficient, scalable, and easily maintanable Web sites.

In the final chapter in this part, you'll learn about Web services. Web services allow you to build distributed applications composed of components and services that can be spread across the Internet (or an intranet). You will see how to create a Web service and understand how Web services are built on the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). You will also study the techniques that a client application can use to connect to a Web service.