.net-a Complete Development Cycle (book/cd-rom)

What is the Purpose of This Book?

The purpose of this book is to introduce and explain to the reader the practical application of software development with Microsoft .NET technologies (based on Visual Studio .NET 2003), state of the art tools and good software engineering practices on the example of a real life project. During the course of this book an entire project life cycle of an Online Photoshop project is shown. The reader, as part of the project team, is integrated into the development team and is required to contribute to the success of the project with his/her own task assignments.

The project starts with a basic application and through moving forward to new iterations of the project, the difficulty of the addressed requirements gradually increases, starting with the design of simple forms and advancing to implementation of multithreaded algorithms and the development of the capability to upload pictures to order prints or customized merchandise.

The entire product development cycle including wrap up, maintenance strategies and best practices for the Online Photoshop project is discussed. Therefore each chapter starts with an explanation of the theory necessary to complete the specific development iteration corresponding to that chapter.

Readers just interested in either the software engineering or the programming related sections will find the icons useful that indicate the beginning of each programming and software engineering related sections throughout the book. The explanation of the theory at the beginning of each chapter enables us to show the reader the connection between the theoretical knowledge of .NET software development and its practical application within a real life project. This practical application of the theory is reiterated piecewise throughout the book. The successful completion of the reader-assigned tasks can be verified by checking the readers' implementation against the sample solution of each chapter that is provided on the CD ROM.

In addition, the extensive references sections provided at the end of each chapter will be a valuable help for readers that would liked to further explore topics of particular interest.

What Is Provided on the CD?
The CD contains the sample solution for each chapter of the book. The solution for each chapter is provided in a directory called "ChapterXX" where XX is the chapter number.

Within the Chapters directory, the source code can be found in the subdirectories of "src". All projects and source code developed within this book can be found within the Visual Studio .NET Photo Editor solution that is part of the "src" directory. Within the source code the sample solution for tasks that are assigned to the reader are identified by "#region Task for the reader Chapter XX" (where XX stands for the chapter number). In addition to the Photo Editor solution the "src" directory contains other projects and subfolders that include utilities and tools that are used and explained during the course of the book.

The automated generated documentation like comment web pages, defect tracking sheet and Requirements documentation that is introduced during the course of the book can be found in the "doc" subdirectory of each chapters' sample solution. Assemblies of the project are provided in both release and debug versions. The debug version can be located in the "bind" subdirectory, whereas the release version of the assemblies is stored in the "bin" subdirectory of sample solution of each chapter.

About the Authors
Gunther Lenz is an expert in the design and implementation of optimized 2D image-processing algorithms, with more than five years of experience with high-performance medical-imaging processing and systems engineering, most recently with Siemens Corporate Research. Gunther's experience in defining and implementing efficient software-engineering practices led to him being an invited speaker at the SM (Software Management) 2003 conference where he also acted as the track chair for the Software Management Methods and Techniques sessions.

Thomas Moeller has ten years of experience as a computer programmer, engineer, and researcher. He is currently working in the Imaging and Visualization group at Siemens Corporate Research, Inc. He is the co-inventor of patent-pending algorithms for volume segmentation and memory management for large volume visualization and has contributed to H-J Scheibl's textbook Visual C++ 6.0 for Beginners and Professionals (Hanser Munich/Vienna 1999).