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Author
: Thomas Kurian Ambattu |
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NET is the latest platform from Microsoft for
the development of windows application. I know that the
previous line does not tell you anything about .NET. So
for a better understanding we will go in detail.
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As
I have told earlier .NET is a platform from Microsoft
on which you can develop windows application. To develop
an application in .NET you need a language which is .NET
complaint. Microsoft provides and IDE Visual Studio that
has .NET complaint languages that helps you to develops
windows application in .NET. The members of the Visual
Studio .NET family are Visual C#.NET,Visual Basic.NET,Visual
C++.NET,Visual J#.NET.All these languages are .NET complaint.
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The
.NET Framework
Hope u got a basic idea at least what .NET
is ….Now we will see the components of .Net and
I’ll explain it one by one.Below is the basic diagram
of .NETFramework.
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Common
Language Specification (CLS)
CLS
a set of rules that developers must follow to achieve
Cross Language Interoperability. Language Interoperability
is the ability of the code to interact with a different
programming language. So if you write a component according
to the common language specification then it can be said
that your component can interact with any language that
is CLS – Complaint. The code that is written according
to CLS is called managed code. The managed code can maximize
code reuse and, therefore, improve the efficiency of the
development process.
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Common
Type System (CTS)
So
far we were discussing about Common Language Specification.
We never thought how this can be achieved. For example
if we say int C# or VB or J# or any .NET complaint language
should understand it as int and int should mean the same
to all .NET complaint language. Same is the case for all
other datatypes .The datatypes should mean the same for
all these languages. Here comes the relevance of CTS.
CTS define every data type as a class so that only Object-Oriented
(or Object-Based) languages can achieve .NET compliance.
The advantage of CTS is that if you write code according
to this you can reuse it. For example if you write a class
in C# and you found it good you can inherit it in VB or
C++ or J# or any other .NET complaint language.
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Common
Language Runtime (CLR)
CLR
can be told as the platform on which applications are
hosted & executed. The code we write according to
the CLS is called the managed code and will be supported
by CLR and the non-CLS complaint code is called as unmanaged
code. The managed code benefits from features like cross-language
exception handling, enhanced security, versioning and
deployment support, a simplified model for component interaction,
and debugging and profiling services. For runtime to provide
these services to managed code the compilers should emit
certain details like data that describes the types, members,
and references in your code and this data is called as
the metadata. The metadata is stored with the code. Each
and every loadable common language runtime Portable Executable
(PE) file contains metadata. This metadata is used by
the runtime for loading classes, locating classes, managing
object references like releasing it when they are no longer
used.
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Microsoft
Intermediate Language (MSIL)
The code written in .NET language is not directly
compiled into machine language, instead it is first converted
into and intermediate code called MSIL.You don’t
have to burn your head thinking about the MSIL syntax.
Our code is automatically converted into MSIL by the compiler.
This code in then converted by the CLR to the machine
language.
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Base
Class Library
This
consists of classes, interfaces, value types etc. to
cater the needs of developers in .NET platform. I’ll
explain this with an example in the case of Visual Studio
6.0,the coding of a component in VB or VC is different
which means you have to write different set of code
for both depending upon the language you use. This was
a bit difficult, so Microsoft came up with the concept
of Base Class Library in .NET which is CLS complaint.
So u need to learn only a single class framework whether
you work in C#.net VC.net or VC.net or J#.net.One of
the important terminology you come across in .NET Framework
is “namespace”. namespace is nothing but
can be called as a set of related classes or structures
or interfaces.
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WebForms
I have already written an article on WebForms.Please
refer the article Introduction
to Web Forms.
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WebServices
Refer the article Xml
Web Services - Tone Apart – 1
for details.
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WindowsForms
In earlier versions of visual studio depending
upon the language we were using different classes or packages
for GUI.for example for VC++ we were using MFC based classes
like CDialog ,for VB we were using VB Forms engine and
so on.In .NET microsoft is proving Windows Forms which
is equivalent to this.The advantage of Windows Forms is
that it can be used in VB or VC or C#.Windows Forms is
common to all the members.So you don't have to learn seperate
classes or function depending on the language you use.
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