DOT NET Framework Introduction

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In this article we’ll cover DOT NET Framework Introduction and is designed for Students, beginners as well as experienced professional developers who want to prepare an interview for .NET Job.

What you’ll learn below:

In this article, we’ll give you an overview of the DOT NET Framework. What were the issues earlier and how these were resolved in next versions. Before DOT NET Framework COM was there. Let’s discuss what COM was and what were the problems we faced in past with COM.

What is COM?

COM stands for ‘Component Object Model’. It is a Microsoft Technologies which was used to develop windows and web applications. In earlier days VB was the programming language getting used in COM and ASP was used to implement web applications.

What are the major issues of COM?

Major Issues of COM were:

  • It does not support all the features of OOPs.
  • Platform dependent, runs on only Windows Operating system.

To overcome the above problems, the DOT NET Framework comes into the picture. On 13 February 2002, Microsoft launched the first .NET Framework, known as .NET Framework 1.0.

Below we will understand the depth of .NET Framework and about its different versions till now.

 What is .NET Framework?

.NET framework provides a common platform to run the applications which are developed using different language such as C#, VB, F# etc. We can also create console, mobile and web applications. .NET framework supports all OOPs features, and we can say it is a pure object oriented. Unfortunately, it is not a platform independent, and it runs only on windows platform. But now we have ASP.NET Core with us and this is truly platform independent.

The main motive of .NET framework is to develop an application that can run on the windows OS. The latest version of the .NET framework is 4.8.1.

DOT NET Framework Introduction

Flow of DOTNET code execution

Above diagram shows the flow of dot net code execution.

What is JIT?

The JIT is known as ‘Just-in-Time’ compiler. It is the component of CLR and is mainly responsible for converting ‘MSIL’ code into ‘Native’ Code. ‘Native’ code is machine dependent code and runs on that machine only where it is created. Following are the 3 types of JIT compiler.

  • PRE JIT-compiler-It’ll compile whole code into ‘Native code’ in single go.
  • ECO JIT complier– compile only specific methods called at runtime.
  • Normal JIT compiler– compile the specific code called at runtime and add it in CACHE.

 Components of .NET Framework

There are following components of .NET Framework:

  1. CLR (Common Language Runtime)
  2. CTS (Common Type System)
  3. BCL (Base Class Library)
  4. CLS (Common Language Specification)
  5. FCL (Framework Class Library)
  6. .NET Assemblies
  7. XML Web Services
  8. Window Services
  9. Memory management.

CLR (common language runtime)

CLR is Common Language Runtime. If we say that it forms the heart of the .NET Framework, then that will not be wrong. All Languages have their own runtime and this runtime take care of all code execution. As .NET has CLR similarly all other languages are also having their own Runtime like Java has Java Virtual Machine and VC++ has MSCRT40.DLL etc.

CTS (Common Type System)

CTS is the common Type system which explains how ‘Types’ are declare, used and managed. As we know that .NET Framework supports many programming languages such as C#, VB, F#, C++ etc. Every programming language has its own data types. You can used C# and VB in your project (in different class lib) and further use these libraries/ DLLs in your application. In such cases CLS make sure the smooth communication between C# and VB projects.

BCL

Base Class Libraries (BCL) is designed by Microsoft. Without BCL we can’t write any code in .NET. So, BCL is also known as the Building block of .NET Programs. These are installed into the machine when we installed the .NET framework. BCL contains pre-defined classes and these classes are used for the purpose of application development.

The physical location of BCL is C:\Windows\assembly

CLS (Common language Specification)

CLS is a subset of common type system (CTS) that contains a set of rules which must be followed by all languages that comes under .NET umbrella. It is used to support language integration and code written in C# can easily communicate with VB or F#. All this become feasible because of CLS.

FCL (Framework Class Library)

Using .NET Framework, we can develop different types of application such as console, desktop, web, mobile. Basically, FCL provides a base on which various type of applications and its components are built. All these base features are provided by FCL.

.NET Assemblies :

Assemblies are the building blocks of .NET framework application. It is a collection of types and resources those are built together and form a logical unit of functionality. All assemblies contain metadata. It is the manifest which contains metadata and metadata further contain all information of assemblies like its version, culture and type etc. Assemblies are of 3 types which are given below.

Types of assemblies:

  • Private- it is developed only for one application.
  • Shared – It can be used by multiple applications, but we need to add it in GAC for the same.
  • Satellite– When you want to develop multi culture (multilingual) application it come into picture.

History of .NET Framework Version

  1. First version of .NET framework 1.0 was launched on Feb 13, 2002.
  2. .NET framework 2.0 was launched on Jan 22, 2006.
  3. .NET framework 3.0 was launched on Nov 21, 2006.
  4. .NET framework 3.5 was released on Nov 19, 2007.
  5. .NET framework4.0 was released on Sept 29, 2008
  6. .NET framework 4.5 was released on Aug 15, 2012.
  7. .NET framework 4.5.1 was launched on Oct 17, 2013
  8. .NET framework 4.5.2 was released on May 05, 2014.
  9. .NET framework 4.6 was launched on Nov 12, 2014
  10. .NET framework 4.6.1 was launched on Oct 30, 2015
  11. .NET framework 4.6.2 was launched on Mar 30, 2016
  12. .NET framework 4.7 was released on Apr 5, 2017
  13. .NET framework 4.7.1 was launched on Oct 17, 2017
  14. .NET framework 4.7.2 was released on Apr 30, 2018.
  15. .NET framework version 4.8 was released on Apr18, 2019
  16. .NET framework version 4.8.1 was released on Aug 09, 2022

I hope, above list of DOT NET Framework questions has done valuable addon to your knowledge bank. For more information on framework, you can visit HERE.

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