Introduction to .NET framework

.Net Framework:

.NET framework provides a user friendly environment for developers to develop, run and deploy the following applications

• Console applications
• Windows applications
• Web applications
• Web services
• Windows services
• Windows communication foundation
• Work flow enabled applications

.NET framework supports the object oriented programming languages such as visual Basic, C# and visual C++.

Advantages of .NET framework

Consistent programming model:

.NET framework provides a consistent programming languauges to perform several tasks like connecting and retrieving databases, and reading from and writing files

Languaue interoperability:

We can reuse the code that was written in one language to be used in other language.this facility provides the efficiency of development process.

Automatic manangement resources:

When developing .NET applications, we use several resources, such as files, memory, and database connections. With .NET, we don’t need to free these resources when they are no longer required.

Ease of deployment:

The best feature in .NET is easy in deployment process when comparing with other platforms. In this,we can quickly install or deploy the applications ,it does not effect the existing applications.

NET Versions:

.NET framework 1.0: the first version .NET framework 1.0 was released by Microsoft on February 13, 2002.this is the first version of visual studio .NET

.NET framework 1.1: the first major upgrade of .NET framework was released on April 3, 2003.It has major upgrades like

• It has built-in support for mobile Asp.net controls
• It supports Open Database Connectivity (ODBC), Oracle databases
• It also has support for internet protocol (IPv6).

.NET framework 2.0: it was released on January 22, 2006.It has new features like

• Introduction of Application Programming Interface (API) changes
• Asp.net Web controls and data controls are introduced
• Asp.net themes, skins and web parts are introduced.

.Net framework 3.0: it was released on November 21, 2006. It implements

• Windows presentation foundation
• Windows communication foundation
• Windows workflow foundation
• Windows card space(WCS)

.NET framework 3.5: it was released on November 19, 2007.

The features that are added to this version are

• Introduction of LINQ
• New compiler for C#, Visual Basic and c++
• In-built support for asp.net AJAX
• Additional classes in .NET class Library
• New ASP.NET controls Listview,datapager and LINQ data source controls
• Introduction of ASP.NET merge tool
• . New Collection type added
• Expression trees

.NET framework 4.0: this version released on April 12, 2010.

There are several new features in .NET 4.0; the following features are the some of them

• Compatibility in application deployment
• Added new concept Parallel computing
• Up gradations in WPF
• New concepts introduced in WCF
• In process side by side execution

Features of .NET Framework:

.NET framework class Library:

The .NET framework class library contains predefined classes which are useful for developers to develop code in applications. Microsoft has created these classes to develop the various applications. This library contains several namespaces and assemblies also.

Common Language Runtime (CLR):

The CLR creates the interoperability between different .NET languages, such as C#, visual basic, by providing common environment for the execution of code written any of these languages.

Every language in .NET has its own compiler, after compiling their codes in their compilers, MSIL code will be generated. This MSIL code is known as intermediate code. This intermediate code is common for all languages in .NET framework. So, CLR provides environment to execute intermediate code.

CLR Responsibilities:

• Automatic memory management: it has built in functions for allocate or de-allocate the memory of .NET objects.
• Garbage collection: CLR automatically clean up resources during the execution of the programs.
• Code Access Security: in this, CLR provides security objects to access code during execution.
• Code verification: It is type safety and prevents code from illegal operations
• Jit compilation: CLR loads MSIL codes on jit-compilers for execute the code.

Common Type System (CTS):

Common type system provides support for multiple languages because it contains a type system that is common for all languages.CTS provides common data type system for all .net languages. It provides common type system that will use in MSIL code.

For example,

In C#, we have data type “int”

In VB, we have data type for integer values “integer”

But CTS uses the data type “system.int32” as a common data type for integer values. This data type is used for ‘int’ and ‘integer’ in MSIL code

Common Language Specification (CLS):

Common language Specification is a set of rules, which provides interoperability between two .net languages.

CLS is a subset of CTS.

CTS provides rules to design application programming interfaces (API) which are used by all .net languages