The .NET Framework

Microsoft's .NET Framework is a set of technologies designed for developing and running applications in environments like the internet (as a web application), the desktop (as a windows application), as a web service or on mobile devices.

The following are some of the main features of the .NET Framework:

• The .NET Framework is based on `Object Oriented Programming' principles. Programs written using these principles are easy to understand and modify.
• Various programming languages are available for writing the code. The .NET Framework provides the following languages: Visual Basic.NET, Visual C#.NET, Visual J# (Microsoft's version of the Java language) and Visual C++.NET. Apart from these languages, several other popular languages have their versions available for the .NET Framework. This means that a developer can use his own choice of language for writing code.
• Code written in one language can be accessed by the applications written in another language. For example, if one developer writes a piece of code in Visual Basic, another developer can use that code in her application written in Visual C#. This is called `Language Inter-operability'.
• The .NET Framework provides a set of `Base Class Libraries'. These class libraries are actually groups that contain thousands of pre-written pieces of codes that can be used directly in our application. This makes the development task a lot easier as there is no need to write additional code for common tasks. Such codes are already provided in these libraries and we only need to include them in our applications.
• Working with data is always a complicated task in any programming language. It is also the most common task that a developer needs to do in developing applications. The .NET Framework makes this a lot easier with ADO.NET. ADO.NET is a collection of pre-written codes, used for working with data. In some cases, we can perform the data handling without writing any code at all!
• The Framework also has ASP.NET, the technology for developing feature-rich, interactive web applications.

ASP.NET is part of the .NET Framework and is used for web application development. Throughout this text, we will learn how to develop professional quality web applications using ASP.NET.