What is .NET?
The Microsoft .NET platform is really an evolution of the Windows software platform and addresses some of the key requirements posed by the development community to help design, build, and manage software applications with reduced time and complexity. Even though the biggest immediate change in the overall platform is the .NET Framework, which provides key technologies for development of custom applications, the change is gradually making its way into almost every technology that Microsoft develops, including the operating system, servers, programming framework, applications, and tools.
Key components of the overall .NET platform include the following:
- .NET Framework— The core of the platform, providing key services for application development, deployment, and execution.
- .NET Compact Framework for Smart Devices— A subset of the .NET Framework targeted for Smart Devices such as PDAs and mobile phones.
- Visual Studio .NET— An integrated set of tools for developing applications and components using the .NET Framework.
- Zero Deploy Smart Client Application— A new programming model allowing rich (also known as “thick”) clients to be easily deployed and managed in a secure fashion, providing an enhanced user interface to clients.
- Microsoft Office System— Works together with the Smart Client Application model to provide key document processing, analytics, and electronic forms capability.
- Prepackaged XML Web services— A set of standards-based hosted Web services providing prepackaged functionality that can be integrated into existing and new applications.
- Enterprise Servers— A core server-side infrastructure for deploying and managing either custom-developed applications or prepackaged functionality.
.NET Introduction
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.NET is a technology platform for development and deployment of business applications using a set of technologies — .NET Framework, multiple programming languages, tools (particularly Visual Studio .NET), applications (including Microsoft Office System), and server technologies (known as Windows Server System, earlier called .NET Enterprise Servers). It is also important to understand that currently most (except SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and BizTalk Server 2004) of the enterprise servers are built on top of Windows DNA technologies, although they do typically have integration and interoperability mechanisms with the .NET Framework.
Microsoft .NET is a very significant change from Microsoft’s previous technology Windows DNA platform (COM/DCOM/ASP/VB/MFC/ATL). Announced in 2000, .NET received a strong response and created excitement in the IT community. A number of organizations started to develop (and even deploy!) applications on the new platform, even in its early beta stages. However, the platform is still evolving—evolution from the 1.0 release of the framework to an enhanced 1.1 release. Even though a lot of what .NET was about has to do with the notion of Web services–based service–oriented architecture, a key reason behind this success has been the enormous amount of prebuilt functionality (available as class libraries) that are available within the .NET Framework itself.