Features of .NET

Now that we know some basics of .NET, let us see what makes .NET a wonderful

platform for developing modern applications.

• Rich Functionality out of the box

.NET framework provides a rich set of functionality out of the box. It contains

hundreds of classes that provide variety of functionality ready to use in your

applications. This means that as a developer you need not go into low level details

of many operations such as file IO, network communication and so on.

• Easy development of web applications

ASP.NET is a technology available on .NET platform for developing dynamic

and data driven web applications. ASP.NET provides an event driven

programming model (similar to Visual Basic 6 that simplify development of web

pages (now called as web forms) with complex user interface. ASP.NET server

controls provide advanced user interface elements (like calendar and grids) that

save lot of coding from programmer’s side.

• OOPs Support

The advantages of Object Oriented programming are well known. .NET provides

a fully object oriented environment. The philosophy of .NET is – “Object is

mother of all.” Languages like Visual Basic.NET now support many of the OO

features that were lacking traditionally. Even primitive types like integer and

characters can be treated as objects – something not available even in OO

languages like C++.

• Multi-Language Support

Generally enterprises have varying skill sets. For example, a company might have

people with skills in Visual Basic, C++, and Java etc. It is an experience that

whenever a new language or environment is invented existing skills are outdated.

This naturally increases cost of training and learning curve. .NET provides

something attractive in this area. It supports multiple languages. This means that

if you have skills in C++, you need not throw them but just mould them to suit

.NET environment. Currently four languages are available right out of the box

namely – Visual Basic.NET, C# (pronounced as C-sharp), Jscript.NET and

Managed C++ (a dialect of Visual C++). There are many vendors that are

working on developing language compilers for other languages (20+ language

compilers are already available). The beauty of multi language support lies in the

fact that even though the syntax of each language is different, the basic

capabilities of each language remain at par with one another.

• Multi-Device Support

Modern lift style is increasingly embracing mobile and wireless devices such as

PDAs, mobiles and handheld PCs. . . .NET provides promising platform for

programming such devices. .NET Compact Framework and Mobile Internet

Toolkit are step ahead in this direction.

• Automatic memory management

While developing applications developers had to develop an eye on system

resources like memory. Memory leaks were major reason in failure of

applications. .NET takes this worry away from developer by handling memory on

its own. The garbage collector takes care of freeing unused objects at appropriate

intervals.

• Compatibility with COM and COM+

Before the introduction of .NET, COM was the de-facto standard for

componentized software development. Companies have invested lot of money and

efforts in developing COM components and controls. The good news is – you can

still use COM components and ActiveX controls under .NET. This allows you to

use your existing investment in .NET applications. .NET still relies on COM+ for

features like transaction management and object pooling. In fact it provides

enhanced declarative support for configuring COM+ application right from your

source code. Your COM+ knowledge still remains as a valuable asset.

• No more DLL Hell

If you have worked with COM components, you probably are aware of “DLL

hell”. DLL conflicts are a common fact in COM world. The main reason behind

this was the philosophy of COM – “one version of component across machine”.

Also, COM components require registration in the system registry. .NET ends this

DLL hell by allowing applications to use their own copy of dependent DLLs.

Also, .NET components do not require any kind of registration in system registry.

• Strong XML support

Now days it is hard to find a programmer who is unaware of XML. XML has

gained such a strong industry support that almost all the vendors have released

some kind of upgrades or patches to their existing software to make it “XML

compatible”. Currently, .NET is the only platform that has built with XML right

into the core framework. .NET tries to harness power of XML in every possible

way. In addition to providing support for manipulating and transforming XML

documents, .NET provides XML web services that are based on standards like

HTTP, XML and SOAP.

• Ease of deployment and configuration

Deploying windows applications especially that used COM components were

always been a tedious task. Since .NET does not require any registration as such,

much of the deployment is simplified. This makes XCOPY deployment viable.

Configuration is another area where .NET – especially ASP.NET – shines over

traditional languages. The configuration is done via special files having special

XML vocabulary. Since, most of the configuration is done via configuration files,

there is no need to sit in front of actual machine and configure the application

manually. This is more important for web applications; simply FTPing new

configuration file makes necessary changes.

• Security

Windows platform was always criticized for poor security mechanisms. Microsoft

has taken great efforts to make .NET platform safe and secure for enterprise

applications. Features such as type safety, code access security and role based

authentication make overall application more robust and secure.