Visual Studio® 2010 and .NET 4, Six-in-one

Chapter 10. Enhancements to the .NET Core Framework

Changes in a release of a new .NET Framework version may affect the core run-time engine (including Common Language Run-time and the Common Type System), the Base Class Library (BCL), Framework services (such as ASP.NET, WPF, WCF and so on), and connected tools and utilities.

While changes in .NET 3.0, 3.5, and 3.5 SP1 targeted mainly the Framework services part and the BCL, the .NET 4 release touched the Common Language Run-time (CLR) significantly and added brand new services (and related BCL types) to shift toward new programming paradigms. This chapter and the following ones (closing with Chapter 21) detail all the new technologies, paradigms, services, and tools that are new in .NET 4.

This chapter covers fundamental enhancements and improvements to the core .NET Framework. You can use them in your managed applications independently of whether you are using Windows Forms, ASP.NET, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Silverlight, Azure, SQL Server, SharePoint, or whatever other technology you use with .NET.

Here's what you'll discover in this chapter:

• Changes in the CLR — This .NET framework version got a new CLR that has many great enhancements. Now a native process is able to host more CLR versions side-by-side. As an important improvement to Component Object Model (COM) interoperability and version resiliency, the CLR can handle type equivalence. Programming ...