Introduction to .Net Framework

You can make use .Net Framework as a development environment or a platform for developing user friendly web-based applications that can allow seamless access by users from any where in the world and from any type of client machines. You can apply the open standards such as XML (eXtensible Markup Language), SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) for developing your web-applications and web applications created with such open standards can interact well with other applications of other platforms.

You can use different programming languages such as C#, VBScript, VB.NET, Managed C++ for developing your applications in .NET Framework, as the .NET Framework is not dependent on one particular language or platform and can support many kinds of platforms and programming languages that are in use today. Further, you can use .NET Framework for running your applications in almost all platforms such as Linux, Macintosh and Unix without any hitches.

The presence of many off-the-shelf libraries in .NET Framework can assist you in developing your applications in a faster, cheaper and easier manner. The most recent .Net Framework version is capable of supporting over 20 different programming languages today.

The functionality of .Net Framework supporting many programming languages is due to the use of the powerful CLR, the Common Language Runtime engine. The application programming codes are first compiled by CLR into a Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) code instead of native codes and the MSIL, which is nothing but an instruction set, in turn creates the native code for running the application.

The main advantage of language and platform independent feature of .NET Framework can be attributed to CLR and the same CLR also takes care of run-time services such as memory processes, security enforcement, integration of language, and thread management. Hence, you can make use of the various infrastructures that have been provided in .NET Framework for creating your web-applications.

As per the classification by the Microsoft, there are two categories of .NET Framework and they are CLR and .Net Framework class library.

Common Language Runtime: The CLR is responsible for providing a common runtime environment or services with which all .NET applications can run. Further, the various capabilities of CLR can enable any developer to write even big applications with ease using the features such as strong type naming, life-cycle management, dynamic binding that is capable of making any business logic into re-usable component and finally the cross-language exception handling.

.Net Framework class library: This class library constitutes various predefined functional sets that are very useful while developing the applications by developers. There are three main components in this class library and they are:

· ASP.NET.
· Windows Forms.
· ADO.NET.

With the .Net Framework you can make your codes written in fewer lines and other favourable features such as easy web settings, easy deployment of applications, easy compilation procedures, easy Web configuration makes the .NET Framework a great platform to work with. In an overall scenario, the developers will be able to concentrate more on Web controls and spend an efficient time in application design and implementation and to have an effective control over the flow of the application sequence.

Another great feature that any developer can take note of is the feature of .NET Framework taking into cognisance all the Web controls, server-side blocks of codes and Web forms and getting them compiled whenever a call for the page compilation is completed.

Once the components of .NET framework are compiled in your machine, the compiled version can easily be uploaded with all the relevant pages in the /bin directory of the system. The process of uploading is very easy when compared to the complicated process of web-application in ASP, where in you have to first upload the application pages with the relevant components and you also need to register them with the operating system.

In .NET Framework the simple uploading in /bin directory of the operating system is enough and you need not carry out the complicated process of registering the components of web-application with the operating system.

With the help of an XML based web.config file you can carry out the web settings which is nothing but configuring the .NET applications for successful running. The XML based web.config file can be modified through a program and when any such modification is done, the system recognises the change and registers it immediately that makes configuration of .NET applications easy and quick.