Microsoft recently announced an experimental developer toolset for building multi-tier web applications using existing and familiar tools, techniques, and patterns, called Microsot Live Labs Volta.
Volta’s declarative tier-splitting enables developers to postpone architectural decisions about distribution until the last possible responsible moment. It enables new end-to-end profiling and testing for higher levels of application performance, robustness, and reliability. In effect, Volta extends the .NET platform to further enable the development of software+services applications, using existing and familiar tools and techniques.
You architect and build your application as a .NET client application, assigning the portions of the application that run on the server tier and client tier late in the development process. You can target either web browsers or the CLR as clients and Volta handles the complexities of tier-splitting. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and all communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together. In effect, Volta offers a best-effort experience in multiple environments without requiring tailoring of the application.
You can download a technology preview of Volta from the Live Labs website.