Website:http://www.microsoft.com/ Software Provider: Microsoft, Inc. Current Version: .Net Framework 3.5 service pack 1 Operating Systems: Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, Server 2003, Server 2008 License: Microsoft EULA
A new hosting API for native applications wishing to host an instance of the .NET runtime. The new API gives a fine grain control on the behavior of the runtime with regards to multithreading, memory allocation, assembly loading and more (detailed reference). It was initially developed to efficiently host the runtime in Microsoft SQL Server, which implements its own scheduler and memory manager.
Full 64-bit support for both the x64 and the IA64 hardware platforms.
Language support for generics built directly into the .NET CLR.
Many additional and improved ASP.NET web controls.
New data controls with declarative data binding.
New personalization features for ASP.NET, such as support for themes, skins and webparts.
.NET Micro Framework - a version of the .NET Framework related to the Smart Personal Objects Technology initiative.
Partial classes
Anonymous methods
Data Tables
Source: Wikipedia
About:
The .NET Framework created by Microsoft is a software development platform focused on rapid application development (RAD), platform independence and network transparency. .NET is Microsoft's strategic initiative for server and desktop development for the next decade. According to Microsoft, .NET includes many technologies that are designed to facilitate rapid development of Internet and intranet applications.
.NET has brought new functionalities and tools to the application programming interface (API). These innovations allow programmers to develop applications for both Windows and the web as well as components and services (web services). .NET provides a new reflective, object-oriented API. .NET is designed to be sufficiently generic that many different high-level languages can be compiled. The .NET framework is a competing product to Sun's Java and J2EE technology and it shares many concepts with it.
There is a collection of development tools specifically developed for use with the .NET platform. The principal example is Visual Studio .NET, an integrated development environment from Microsoft.
