Dot net Overview To know Dot Net Programming

What is Dot Net Framework
BY DINESH THAKUR
Microsoft officially defined .NET Framework as follows:



The .NET Framework is the heart of Microsoft .NET. The .NET Framework is a software development platform of Microsoft .NET. Like any platform, it provides a runtime, defines functionality in some libraries, and supports a set of programming languages. The .NET Framework provides the necessary compile-time and run-time foundation to build and run .NET-based applications.


Type of .NET Languages
BY DINESH THAKUR
To help create languages for the .NET Framework, Microsoft created the Common Language Infrastructure specification (CLI). The CLI describes the features that each language must provide in order to use the .NET Framework and comm6n language runtime and to interoperate with components written in other languages. If a language implements the necessary functionality, it is said to be .NET-compliant.


What is Dot Net
BY DINESH THAKUR
INTRODUCTION

The .NET is the technology from Microsoft, on which all other Microsoft technologies will be depending on in future. It is a major technology change, introduced by Microsoft, to catch the market from the SUN's Java. Few years back, Microsoft had only VC++ and VB to compete with Java, but Java was catching the market very fast. With the world depending more and more on the Internet/ Web and java related tools becoming the best choice for the web applications, Microsoft seemed to be loosing the battle. Thousands of programmers moved to java from VC++ and VB. To recover the .market, .Microsoft announced .NET.




Common Language Specification (CLS))
BY DINESH THAKUR
One of the obvious themes of .NET is unification and interoperability between various programming languages. In order to achieve this; certain rules must be laid and all the languages must follow these rules. In other words we can not have languages running around creating their own extensions and their own fancy new data types. CLS is the collection of the rules and constraints that every language (that seeks to achieve .NET compatibility) must follow.




UNIFIED CLASSES (Base Class Library)
BY DINESH THAKUR
The term .NET framework refers to the group of technologies that form the development foundation for the Microsoft .NET platform. The key technologies in this group are the run time and the class libraries.


Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL)
BY DINESH THAKUR
A .NET programming language (C#, VB.NET, J# etc.) does not compile into executable code; instead it compiles into an intermediate code called Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL). As a programmer one need not worry about the syntax of MSIL - since our source code in automatically converted to MSIL. The MSIL code is then send to the CLR (Common Language Runtime) that converts the code to machine language which is then run on the host machine.


Common Type System (CTS)
BY DINESH THAKUR
The language interoperability, and .NET Class Framework, are not possible without all the language sharing the same data types. What this means is that an "int" should mean the same in VB, VC++, C# and all other .NET compliant languages. Same idea follows for all the other data types. This is achieved through introduction of Common Type System (CTS).




Common Language Runtime (CLR)
BY DINESH THAKUR
The Common Language Runtime (CLR) is a very important part of the .NET Framework. At the base level, it is the infrastructure that executes applications, and allows them to interact with the other parts of the Framework. It also provides important capabilities in optimizing, securing, and providing many robust capabilities such as application deployment and side-by-side execution.


User and Program Interface
BY DINESH THAKUR
The .NET framework provides the following tools for manag1ng user and application interfaces:



• Windows forms

• Web Forms

• Console Applications

• Web Services



These tools enable users to develop user-friendly desktop-based as well as web-based applications using a wide variety of languages on the .NET platform.


Just in Time Compiler(JIT)
BY DINESH THAKUR
Machines cannot run MSIL directly. JIT compiler turns MSIL into native code, which is CPU specific code that runs on the same computer architecture as the JIT compiler. Because the common. Language runtime supplies a JIT compiler for each supported CPU architecture, developers can write a set of MSIL that can be JIT-compiled and run on computers with different architectures.




What is Visual Studio .NET
BY DINESH THAKUR
Many people always get confused with Visual Studio .NET (VS.NET) and .NET technology. VS.NET is just an editor, provided by Microsoft to help developers to write .NET programs easily. VS.NET editor automatically generates lot of code, allow developers to drag and drop controls to a form, provide short cuts to compile and build the application etc.


Common Language Infrastructure (CLI)
BY DINESH THAKUR
The Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) is an open specification developed by Microsoft that describes the executable code and runtime environment that allows multiple high-level languages to be used on different computer platforms without being rewritten for specific architectures. CLR is Microsoft Commercial implementation of Common Language Infrastructure (CLI).




Garbage Collection
BY DINESH THAKUR
When you initialize a variable using the new operator, you are in fact asking the compiler to provide you some memory space in the heap memory. The compiler is said to "allocate" memory for your variable. When that variable is no longer needed, such as when your program closes, it (the variable) must be removed from memory and the space it was using can be made available to other variables or other programs. This is referred to as garbage collection. In the past, namely in C/C++, this was a concern for programmers because they usually had to remember to manually delete such a variable (a pointer) and free its memory.




HOW CLR PROVIDES CROSS LANGUAGE INTERACTION
BY DINESH THAKUR

A component can be called by any .NET-based language regardless the original language of that component. The cross-language compatibility is possible because objects created in different .NET languages agree on a common set of types and features. These common types and features are spelled out in the Common Language Specification (CLS).