The rest of the book allowed me to complete a moderately size distributed project in a lot less time that I thought it would. There is also a great chapter on using transactions under Component Services. I was also able the complete my last MCAD certification test (VB XML) based mainly on what I got out of this book.

This book has no fluff and is packed with a lot of key concepts and practical code samples. The only downside was the brief coverage and dismissal of Web Services. The Appendix turned out to be coverage of ADO.Net written by Andrew Troelsen. I didn't read this chapter because I was already up to speed on ADO.Net. But having read a couple of Troelsen's other books, my guess is that it's pretty good.