Your choice of programming model also is your choice of programming model, so to speak.

Not only does this scenario require familiarity with several programming languages, but it also requires a mastery of the application programming interfaces that bridge the different domains, such as ADO.NET or Open DataBase Connectivity (ODBC).

If you don't handle them, we shut your application down. That dramatically increases the reliability of the system.

We know that our underlying technology was not rich enough, ... It was not a particularly friendly world to program in.

The .NET framework was built really to support XML Web services.

I absolutely think it will, because it makes .Net a more appealing proposition.