Introduction

In late December 1998, Microsoft began working on a new development platform that would result in an entirely new way to create and run next-generation applications and web services. This new platform was called the .NET Framework and was publicly announced in June 2000.

The .NET Framework unified the existing Windows interfaces and services under a single application programming interface (API) and added many of the emerging industry standards, such as Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), and many existing Microsoft technologies, such as the Microsoft Component Object Model (COM and COM+) and Active Server Pages (ASP). In addition to providing a consistent development experience, the .NET Framework enabled developers to focus ...

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