A Programmer's Guide to .NET

1.4. The .NET Framework

According to the Microsoft, .NET Framework is:

A platform for building, deploying, and running web services and applications. It provides a highly productive, standards-based, multi-language environment for integrating existing investments with next-generation applications and services as well as the ability to solve the challenges of deployment and operation of Internet-scale applications.

The Microsoft .NET Framework consists of three main parts:

• Common Language Runtime;

• .NET class library, which is sometimes called “Base Framework”;

• ASP.NET.

Figure 1.3 shows the components of the Microsoft .NET Framework.

Figure 1.3. The components of the .NET Framework

The .NET Framework class library

The .NET Framework includes ...