There are lots of technologies available for creating web applications and websites, ASP.NET is one of them. ASP.Net can be seen as successor of ASP from Microsoft. ASP stands for Active Server Pages. It is just a technology that runs on server which is used for web application and web development. ASP.Net is gaining popularity because it can be used with more than 44 programming languages. C#, VB.Net and J# to name few of them. Before creating web applications, we should understand and have basic knowledge about .Net Framework, Compilation Process, Back End Tools and Development environment required for it. In this article we will discuss about .Net Framework, its versions, and benefits of using .Net.
Table of Contents
Understanding .Net Frame Work
The .Net framework is collection of tools, technologies & languages which work together to communicate on multiple platforms because client can be anybody. The .Net framework can be defined as a language neutral platform designed to provide a number of rich and powerful application development tools and technologies. It has an extensive class library that provides wide-ranging support for data access. .Net framework has an independent code execution and management environment called the Common Language Runtime (CLR) which ensures that code is safe to run, and provides an abstract layer on top of the operating system, which allows the elements of the .Net framework to run on many operating systems and devices.
.Net Frame Work Architecture
Base Class Library (BCL)
The Base Class Library (BCL) is collection of standard classes which we can use in .NET supported languages and is a standard library available to all languages using the .NET Framework. .NET includes the BCL in order to encapsulate a large number of common functions, such as file reading and writing, graphic rendering, database interaction, and XML document manipulation, which makes the programmer’s job easier. It is much larger in scope than standard libraries for most other languages, including C++, and is comparable in scope and coverage to the standard libraries of Java. The BCL is sometimes incorrectly referred to as the Framework Class Library (FCL), which is a superset including the Microsoft Namespaces.
Common Language Runtime (CLR)
The Common Language Runtime (CLR) is the environment which manage the execution of coding. CLR is the virtual machine component of Microsoft’s .NET framework and is responsible for managing the execution of .NET programs. In a process known as just-in-time (JIT) compilation, the CLR compiles the intermediate language code known as Common Intermediate Language (CIL) into the machine instructions that in turn are executed by the computer’s CPU. The CLR provides additional services including memory management, type safety and exception handling. All programs written for the .NET framework, regardless of programming language, are executed by the CLR. It manages:-
- Memory
- Garbage Collector
- Multiple languages support
Versions of .Net Framework
| Version | Visual Studio Version | Date of Release | Description |
| .Net Framework 1.0 | Visual Studio 2000 | Feb 13,2002 | For Testing |
| .Net Framework 1.1 | Visual Studio 2003 | April 24,2003 | First version in 2003 in market |
| .Net Framework 2.0 | Visual Studio 2005 | Nov 07,2005 | |
| .Net Framework 3.0 | Expression Blend | Nov 06,2006 | Only for windows vista |
| .Net Framework 3.5 | Visual Studio 2008 | Nov 19,2007 | For windows 7,8,8.1,10 |
| .Net Framework 4.0 | Visual Studio 2010 | April 12,2010 | |
| .Net Framework 4.5 | Visual Studio 2012 | August 15,2012 | For windows 8 |
| .Net Framework 4.5.1 | Visual Studio 2013 | October 17, 2013 | For windows 8.1 |
| .Net Framework 4.5.2 | N/A | May 05, 2014 | |
| .Net Framework 4.6 | Visual Studio 2015 | July 20,2015 | |
| .Net Framework 4.6.1 | Visual Studio 2015 | Nov 30,2015 |
Benefits of using .Net
The windows platform is inherently complex and may pose several problems for programmers. However the .Net platform is used as it provides solutions to many such problems and offers an Internet centric platform. The following are the benefits of using .Net platform:
Multiple platform Support: .Net platform has been designed keeping multiple platform support as a key feature. For version 2.0 this means that the code written using the .Net platform can run on all versions of Windows. i.e. Windows 98,95,NT,2000 and so on.
Microsoft has included rich support for all the platforms. Also this code shall also work on any 64-bit processor that may be used by Microsoft later.
It is also expected that .Net shall run on other platforms like UNIX also, however it is not for sure that all functionality will be available for the same.
.Net as a clean start: On the windows platform, the technologies available often depend on the programming language that they are written in, so they are very different. Depending on the chosen programming language, these technologies can be restrictive.The problem with this approach is that it makes the Windows platform harder to understand.
Using .Net there is just one simple object oriented way of accessing the functionality of the .Net Framework.
Performance: .Net has been designed to provide great performance and scalability. For .Net to succeed, the companies must be able to migrate their applications and not suffer due to the way the CLR works. To ensure this CLR converts the code into native machine code. So the conversion can take step-by-step method and will make use of the given machines resources and processor features.
As newer versions of the CLR are released and technologies like web forms are released, each release will have a better performance and smaller memory footprints. Also .Net has succeeded in replacing completely the older technologies like COM with better and efficient design equivalents. At the heart of the .Net platform is the CLR.
Header Image taken from http://www.asp.net/
