.NET

What is Microsoft .NET Framework?

The .NET Framework is Microsoft's comprehensive and consistent programming model for building applications that have visually stunning user experiences, seamless and secure communication, and the ability to model a range of business processes.

.NET Framework Overview

The .NET Framework is Microsoft's platform for building applications that have visually stunning user experiences, seamless and secure communication, and the ability to model a range of business processes. By providing you with a comprehensive and consistent programming model and a common set of APIs, the .NET Framework helps you to build applications that work the way you want, in the programming language you prefer, across software, services, and devices.

Secure, Multi-Language Development Platform. Developers and IT professionals can count on .NET as a powerful and robust software development technology that provides the security advancements, management tools, and updates you need to build, test, and deploy highly reliable and secure software. .NET supports the programming language you prefer by providing one multi-language development platform, so you can choose how you want to work. The Common Language Runtime (CLR) provides support for powerful, static languages like Visual Basic© and Visual C#©, and the advent of the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) means that dynamic languages, such as Managed Jscript, IronRuby and IronPython, are also supported.

Rapid, Model-Driven Development Paradigm. .NET offers pioneering solutions that enable rapid application development and result in dramatic increases in productivity. For example, the new ADO.NET Entity Framework offers a model-based development paradigm and a standards-based framework that raises the level of abstraction for database programming, allowing developers to cleanly separate one's business logic, data and user interface. By programming against a conceptual application model instead of programming directly against a relational storage schema, developers can greatly reduce the amount of code and maintenance required for data-oriented applications.

Next-Generation User Experiences. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provides a unified framework for building applications and high-fidelity experiences in Windows Vista that blend together application UI, documents, and media content, while exploiting the full power of the computer. WPF offers developers support for both 2D and 3D graphics, hardware accelerated effects, scalability to different form factors, interactive data visualization, and superior content readability. Further, with a common file format (XAML), designers can become an integral part of the development process by working alongside developers in a workflow that promotes creativity while maintaining full fidelity.

Cutting-Edge Web Application Development. ASP.NET is a free technology that enables Web developers to create anything from small, personal Web sites through to large, enterprise-class dynamic Web applications. Microsoft's free AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) framework – ASP.NET AJAX – enables developers to quickly create more efficient, more interactive, and highly personalized Web experiences that work across all of the most popular browsers. And the new ASP.NET Dynamic Data functionality in Visual Studio 2008 uses a rich scaffolding framework that allows rapid data-driven Web development without writing any code.

Secure, Reliable Web Services. The service-oriented programming model of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is built on the Microsoft .NET Framework and simplifies development of connected systems and ensures interoperability. Windows Communication Foundation unifies a broad array of distributed systems capabilities in a composable and extensible architecture, spanning transports, security systems, messaging patterns, encodings, network topologies, and hosting models.

Enabling Mission-Critical Business Processes. With .NET, developers can use Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) to model a business process with code, enabling closer collaboration between developers and business process owners, and providing end users with better access to data, thereby improving productivity.

Superior Reach Across Devices and Platforms. The .NET Framework enables developers to build solutions for a wide array of devices, from personal computers and servers to mobile phones and embedded devices. Silverlight, a runtime that contains a subset of the .NET Framework, helps developers expand their reach by providing a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET-based media experiences, advertising and rich interactive applications (RIAs).