Intoduction to .Net Framework

.NET Framework

 .NET Framework is s software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windowsincludes a large Library and providee language interoperability (each language can use code written in other languages) across several programming languages. Programs written for .NET Framework execute in a software environment (as contrasted to hardware environment), known as the Common Language Runtime (CLR), an application virtual machine that provides services such as security, memory management, and exception handling. The class library and the CLR together constitute .NET Framework.

Microsoft started development of .NET Framework in the late 1990s, originally under the name of Next Generation Windows Services (NGWS). By late 2000 the first beta versions of .NET 1.0 were released.

The .NET platform is crucial to so many developers’ day to day lives. We’ve been working for the past two years to build the best platform yet. We started the last release by listening to what customer’s wanted, and worked hard to make improvements where we could while supporting important new Microsoft releases like Windows 8. Over this release, a few themes drove a lot of our decisions:

•   First class support for writing Metro style applications with .NET
• Improve performance with little to no effort from application developers
• Write code more easily for data access and web services
• Make it possible to write portable libraries across platforms, and support a new processor  
• Address many top developer requests for .NET APIs and tools 

We want to dive into each of these areas. Blogging allows us to have a two-way discussion about the data and considerations that went into the design-decisions. We’re very excited to talk about what we’ve been building.

What's new in .NET Framework 4.5

The next major release of the .NET Framework, .NET 4.5, allows you to easily use Windows 8 technologies, like Windows Runtime, directly from .NET 4.5. Accessing your data is easier than ever with support for the newest features in SQL Server and support for WebSockets. Programs are more responsive, with the AWAIT keyword, faster ASP.NET startup and an improved server Garbage Collector. .NET 4.5 incorporates key customer feedback, with the newest MEF features, support for long running workflows with State Machines, and improved HTML 5 support in ASP.NET. In this overview talk, you’ll learn about all of these technologies, and get pointers to deeper dives where you can learn more.

What's new in .NET Framework 4.5.1

      Core new features and enhancements include :-

·         Automatic binding redirection for assemblies. Starting with Visual Studio 2013, when you compile an app that targets the .NET Framework 4.5.1, binding redirects may be added to the app configuration file if your app or its components reference multiple versions of the same assembly. You can also enable this feature for projects that target older versions of the .NET Framework.

·         Ability to collect diagnostics information to help developers improve the performance of server and cloud applicationsAbility to explicitly compact the large object heap (LOH) during garbage collection.

·         Additional performance improvements such as ASP.NET app suspension, multi-core JIT improvements, and faster app startup after a .NET Framework update. 

Improvements when debugging your .NET Framework apps in Visual Studio 2013 include: 

     1.      Return values in the Visual Studio debugger. When you debug a managed app in Visual Studio 2013,   the Autos window displays return types and values for methods. This information is available for desktop, Windows Store, and Windows Phone apps.

 2.      Edit and Continue for 64-bit apps. Visual Studio 2013 supports the Edit and Continue feature for 64-bit managed apps for desktop, Windows Store, and Windows Phone. The existing limitations remain in effect for both 32-bit and 64-bit apps.

3.      Async-aware debugging. To make it easier to debug asynchronous apps in Visual Studio 2013, the call stack hides the infrastructure code provided by compilers to support asynchronous programming, and also chains in logical parent frames so you can follow logical program execution more clearly. A Tasks window replaces the Parallel Tasks window and displays tasks that relate to a particular break point, and also displays any other tasks that are currently active or scheduled in the app. 

4.      Better exception support for Windows Runtime components. In Windows 8.1, exceptions that arise from Windows Store apps preserve information about the error that caused the exception, even across language boundaries.  

.Net Framework 4.5- Core New Features and Improvements 

1.      Ability to reduce system restarts by detecting and closing .NET Framework 4 applications during deployment. Support for arrays that are larger than 2 gigabytes (GB) on 64-bit platforms. This feature can be enabled in the application configuration file. 

2.      Better performance through background garbage collection for servers. When you use server garbage collection in the .NET Framework 4.5, background garbage collection is automatically enabled. 

3.      Background just-in-time (JIT) compilation, which is optionally available on multi-core processors to improve application performance. 

4.      Ability to limit how long the regular expression engine will attempt to resolve a regular expression before it times out. 

5.      Ability to define the default culture for an application domain. 

6.      Support for versioning of cultural string ordering and comparison data. 

7.      Better performance when retrieving resources. 

8.      Zip compression improvements to reduce the size of a compressed file. 

9.      Ability to customize a reflection context to override default reflection behavior through the Customer Reflection Context  class. 

10.  Support for the 2008 version of the Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) standard when the System.Globalization.IdnMapping  class is used on Windows 8. 

11.  Delegation of string comparison to the operating system, which implements Unicode 6.0, when the .NET Framework is used on Windows 8. When running on other platforms, the .NET Framework includes its own string comparison data, which implements Unicode 5.x. See the string class and the Remarks section of the sort versions class. 

12.  Ability to compute the hash codes for strings on a per application domain basis. 

13.  Type reflection support split between Type and TypeInfo classes.

In the .NET Framework 4.5, the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) provides the following new features: 

1. Support for generic types.

2.  Convention-based programming model that enables you to create parts based on naming conventions rather than attributes

3. Multiple scopes.

4. A subset of MEF that you can use when you create Windows Store apps. This subset is available as a downloadable package  from the NuGet Gallery. To install the package, open your project in Visual Studio, choose Manage NuGet Packages from the Project menu, and search online for the Microsoft.Composition package.