Introduction to .Net

1.1 What is .NET

The .NET framework  provides a controlled environment for developing and running applications. Framework provides a rich library of APIs that applications can use. This library includes functions for GUI, accessing databases, communicating across networks and much more.

1.2  Why .NET

·        Comprehensive interoperability with existing code.

·        Complete and total language integration.

·        A common runtime engine shared by all .NET-aware languages.

·        A comprehensive base class library.

·        A truly simplified deployment model

1.3  Introducing the Building Blocks of the .NET Platform (the CLR,        CTS, and CLS)

.NET can be understood as a runtime environment and a comprehensive base class library. The runtime layer is properly referred to as the common language runtime, or CLR.

The primary role of the CLR is to locate, load, and manage .NET types on your behalf. The CLR also takes care of a number of low-level details such as memory management; creating application domains, threads, and object

context boundaries; and performing various security checks.

Another building block of the .NET platform is the Common Type System, or CTS. The CTS  specification fully describes all possible data types and programming constructs supported by the runtime, specifies how these entities can interact with each other, and details how they are represented in the .NET metadata format.

The Common Language Specification (CLS) is a related specification that

defines a subset of common types and programming constructs that all .NET programming languages can agree on. Thus, if you build .NET types that only expose CLS-compliant features, you can rest assured that all .NET-aware languages can consume them. Conversely, if you make use of adata type or programming construct that is outside of the bounds of the CLS, you cannot guarantee that every .NET programming language can interact with your .NET code library.