Understanding the .NET Framework

The Internet revolution of the late 1990s represented a dramatic shift in the way individuals and organizations communicate with each other. Traditional applications, such as word processors and accounting packages, are modeled as stand-alone applications: they offer users the capability to perform tasks using data stored on the system the application resides and executes on. Most new software, in contrast, is modeled based on a distributed computing model where applications collaborate to provide services and expose functionality to each other. As a result, the primary role of most new software is changing into supporting information exchange (through Web servers and browsers), collaboration (through e-mail and instant messaging), and individual expression (through Web logs, also known as Blogs, and e-zines — Web based magazines). Essentially, the basic role of software is changing from providing discrete functionality to providing services.

The .NET Framework represents a unified, object-oriented set of services and libraries that embrace the changing role of new network-centric and network-aware software. In fact, the .NET Framework is the first platform designed from the ground up with the Internet in mind.

This chapter introduces the .NET Framework in terms of the benefits it provides. I
present some sample code in Visual C# .NET, Visual Basic .NET, Visual Basic 6.0, and Visual C++; don't worry if you're not familiar with these languages, since I describe in the discussion what each sample does.