acknowledgments We can't mention by name all the individuals who made contributions to this book, adding to its value in ways both large and small. All of them deserve our sincere thanks, but here we will mention only a few whose help was invaluable to us during the writing process. Cynthia Kane--Cynthia is our development editor at Manning. She was there for us from the the beginning, providing support and guidance, and has proved a master at transforming a bunch of words and images into an appealing book. Thank you. Scott Guthrie--Scott, also known as ScottGu, is the man behind a number of prod- ucts in the Microsoft Developer Division, including ASP . NET . Scott was always willing to let us solve some of the problems that we encountered with a beta. Thank you. The Developer Division at Microsoft--thanks to everyone for their help and for building such a great product. All the folks at ASPI talia.com, our "mother ship"--if we managed to collect enough scenarios for your problem-solving enjoyment, part of the credit has to go to the mem- bers of our community. Many individuals at Manning worked hard on this book to bring it to our readers. A big thank-you to Michael Stephens and Marjan Bace for believing in us, and to the production team of Mary Piergies, Joan Celmer, Susan Harkins, Gordan Salinovic, and Janet Vail for their efforts. Our peer reviewers deserve special mention. Their suggestions and feedback were invaluable and made this a much better book. We thank Alex Thissen, Dave Corun, Anil Radhakrishna, Philippe Vialatte, Nikander Bruggeman, Margriet Bruggeman, xvii