.NET

.NET FRAMEWORK

If were able to describe the C# language and its associated environment the .NET framework as the most important new technology for developers for many years.we would not be exaggerating .Net is designed to new environment within which you can develop almost any application to run on windows and possibly in future on other platforms,while C# is a new programming language that has been designed specifically to work with .NET .Using C# you can,for example ,write a dynamic web page ,a component of a distributed application ,a database access component ,or a classic windows desktop application.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF .NET

In order to understand the significance of .Net it is useful to remind ourselves of the nature of many windows technologies that have appeared in the last ten years or so.In that time ,we've progressed on the home PC side from Windows 3.1(introduced in 1992) through to windows 95,98 and the most recently the Millennium Edition .Ont the business side,we've seen Windows NT 3.55,NT 4.0 and windows 2000,while Windows XP is set to cater for both home and business users.

SO WHAT IS .NET?

.Net is two things.First,its a library -and one that is just as extensive as the windows API.you can use it to call up all the same sort of feathers that have traditionally been the role of windows operating system;Displaying windows and dialog boxes,verifying security credentials,calling on base operating system services,creating threads,and so on,as well as newer areas such as accessing databases or connecting to the internet or providing web services .Unlike the old windows API however which was basically a huge set of C function calls the .Net library is fully object oriented 

Second the .Net provides the environment in which your program is run.we generally talk about the .Net run time as known as the CLR COMMON LANGUAGE RUN TIME which really means the software that deals with the execution of your program.when.Net -aware code is executed,it will be the.Net run time which startsup your code,manages the running threads,provides various background services,and in real sense is the immediate environment seen by the code.NET as something that provides level of abstraction from operating system.

ADVANTAGES OF .NET  

we've gone on in general terms about how great .Net is but we've said much about it helps to make your life as a developers easier.I'll define some of the improved features of .Net 

• OBJECT ORIENTED PROGRAMMING

Object  Oriented programming OOP is a style of programming in which your code is broken up into units or parts  known as class and objects .Each  object usually abstracts some real world object that the application is concerned with.An object carries some state information as well as making methods available also allow you to base new object on existing objects by a process known as inhertance

• GOOD DESIGN

What constitutes good design is.of course,subjective ,but Microsoft have taken a lot of trouble with .Net to consult developers and to learn from previous mistakes.The result is a base class library ,which is designed from the ground up in a highly intuitive way.In the vast majority of cases,you only have to look at the definition of a method to be able to see what if does and how to use it . that was certainty not true of the Windows API ,for which function are often not intuitive and often require a number of parameters that have to do with intricacies of the internal operation of the API or backward compatibility that with the aim of that function

As an example,creating and displaying a new windows with .NET means instantiating a form object perhaps setting a few properties on it,and calling its show() method.

• LANGUAGE INDEPENDENCE

Although in the past COM component could communicate with each other no matter which  COM-aware language each one had been written in,there was still a large gulf between VB,Visual J++ and Visual C++.The data types were different ,and making a COM component available to any language meant putting severe restrictions on its method signatures,often in a way that would limit performance .And it was certainly not possible to mix the various language in the same code module 

All that has now changed with .NET all of the language VB.Net C#.NET and managed C++ compile to a common subset called the intermediate language.In the debugger ,for example you can step straight from C++ code into C# code,and from there into VB with out any problem.

• BETTER SUPPORT FOR DYNAMIC WEB PAGES

Up to now ,the standard way of hosting dynamic web pages on windows has been using ASP.NET while ASP offers a lot of flexibility ,it is also inefficient due to its use of interpreted scripting languages,and the lack of object oriented design often result in messy ASP code.NET offers an integrated support for webpages,using a new technology -ASP.NET.With ASP.NET code in your pages is compiled and may be written in a .NET aware high-level language such as C# or VB.

• DATA ACCESS

The .NET base class library is extremely extensive,including virtually full support for windows base services ,as well as for a number of component libraries .DATA accessing that was added to windows is a fundamental part of base class library from the start.A set of .NET components collectively known as ADO.NET,provides efficient access to relational databases and a variety of data resources.

• SUPPORT WEB SERVICES

Web services are some thing that many people in the industry are convinces are going to be big business in the next few years The idea is that various methods on an object can be called across the internet via standard web protocols.This will bring a new meaning to distributed applications;It'll mean that companies will be able to provide services ,such as weather reports,parcel services ,credit card validation etc etc

• 
  

• C# 

The list of advantages of .Net wouldn't  be compile with out mentioning the fact that using .NET means you get to write a code in C# to write code in C# if you want to, C# is also a very good ,well designed language,which corrects a number of flaws that were present in existing language

INTEGRATED DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT(IDE):
I'll just say a couple words about the development environment ,Visual studio.Net .Up to now,each language has effectively had its own independent developer environment  with in VS 6 package