What Is Microsoft .NET?

Microsoft .NET is software that connects information, people, systems, and devices. It spans clients, servers, and developer tools, and consists of:

• The .NET Framework programming model that enables developers to build Web-based applications, smart client applications, and XML Web services applications which expose their functionality programmatically over a network using standard protocols such as SOAP and HTTP.
• Developer tools, such as Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET, which provide a rapid application integrated development environment for programming with the .NET Framework.
• A set of servers, including Microsoft Windows® 2000, Microsoft SQL Server™, and Microsoft BizTalk® Server, that integrates, runs, operates, and manages XML Web services and applications.
• Client software, such as Windows XP, Windows CE, and Microsoft Office XP, that helps developers deliver a deep and compelling user experience across a family of devices and existing products.

What Is the .NET Framework?

The .NET Framework is the programming model of the .NET environment for building, deploying, and running Web-based applications, smart client applications, and XML Web services. It manages much of the plumbing, enabling developers to focus on writing the business logic code for their applications. The .NET Framework includes the common language runtime and class libraries.

Common Language Runtime

The common language runtime is responsible for run time services such as language integration, security enforcement, memory, process, and thread management. In addition, it has a role at development time when features such as life-cycle management, strong type naming, cross-language exception handling, dynamic binding, and so on, reduce the amount of code that a developer must write to turn business logic into a reusable component.

Class Libraries

Base classes provide standard functionality such as input/output, string manipulation, security management, network communications, thread management, text management, user interface design features, and other functions. The Microsoft ADO.NET data classes support persistent data management and include SQL classes for manipulating persistent data stores through a standard SQL interface. XML classes enable XML data manipulation and XML searching and translations. The Microsoft ASP.NET classes support the development of Web-based applications and XML Web services. The Windows Forms classes support the development of Windows-based smart client applications. Together, the class libraries provide a common, consistent development interface across all languages supported by the .NET Framework.

High-Level Statistics and Market Momentum

• The .NET Framework has been live since January 2002. The Beta releases reached over 4 million developers worldwide through 3.5 million CDs and 700,000 unique downloads.
• Compilers for over 20 programming languages are available for use with the .NET Framework.
• Dozens of components and controls are now available from third-party vendors.
• Microsoft is aggressively deploying .NET Framework–based applications today. MSN® and the Microsoft.com Smart 404 are just a few of the many Microsoft applications already transitioned to the .NET Framework.

Rapid Development

• The multiple-language capability of the .NET Framework enables developers to use the programming language that is most appropriate for a given task and to combine languages within a single application. Support for the .NET Framework has been announced for over 20 commercial and academic programming languages.
• The component-based, plumbing-free design of the .NET Framework enables developers to write less code. The sample .NET Pet Shop, the .NET-based version of Sun's best-practice sample application, Java Pet Store, implements the same functionality as the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) version, but it uses one-third the code of the J2EE version.

In the Industry

"Even controlling for factors such as experience and the fact that this is a rewrite rather than an original implementation, we were twice as productive [using the .NET Framework and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET] as we were on the initial release of the solution." Tore Lode, Senior Developer, CyberWatcher

Improved Operations

• In .NET Pet Shop, the .NET-based implementation of Sun's Java Pet Store, performance exceeds that of the J2EE version by 28 times while serving six times the concurrent users and requiring one-sixth the CPU utilization.
• The .NET Framework offers significant performance and scalability benefits over the previous Active Server Pages (ASP) technology.

All results are based on Windows 2000 Advanced Server. Microsoft ASP and Microsoft ASP.NET are running on a database running SQL Server 2000.

In the Industry

"We get subsecond page loads while handling millions of page views a day. We deployed on December 23, 2000 and haven't had a minute of downtime as of October 3, 2001, and we saved $1.3 million over a Java 2 Enterprise Edition solution." Stephen Forte, CTO, Zagat Survey

"Compared with similar projects in the past, we're measuring deployment time in hours instead of weeks." Ferdy Khater, Director of Application Development, Continental Airlines

Agile Architecture

• Companies around the world are using the XML Web services communication mechanism that is native to the .NET Framework to integrate quickly and easily with suppliers and customers.

In the Industry

"From our partners' perspective, accessing our content via XML Web services will be far easier than what they've had to go through in the past. They will no longer need to build the infrastructure to import, store, and manage it. When combined with our new flexibility in licensing options, this means we'll have a far more attractive package to offer to prospective partners." Stephen Forte, CTO, Zagat Survey

"This makes it easier for us to inform portals and enterprises about how our code handles user data, security concerns, and integration with existing databases. Particularly handy are the automatically generated documentation and test Web pages, which enable our partners to integrate their systems with ours using minimal assistance." Tore Lode, Senior Developer, CyberWatcher

Vibrant User Community

• Numerous user groups and discussion lists exist around the world on a variety of topics and in a multitude of languages, including English, Japanese, German, and Spanish.
  
  More information can be found on the MSDN® developer community pages that provide access to newsgroups, chats, user groups, and other opportunities to interact with developers who are interested in Microsoft products and technologies.
• More than 300 publications covering the .NET Framework and programming languages for the .NET Framework are either currently available or will soon be released. Some highlights include:
  
  
  • .NET Framework Essentials, O'Reilly Press
  • Professional ASP.NET, Wrox Press Ltd.
  • Visual Basic to Visual Basic .NET, Sams Publishing
  
  For more books and articles, visit the MSDN Developer Bookstore, or go to the .NET Books site.
• For training and events, visit the .NET Framework Training and Events page.

References, Links, Sources, and More Information

• To obtain the latest version of the .NET Framework, visit the Microsoft .NET Web site.
• Language compilers that support the .NET Framework have been announced for the following programming languages:

  APL C++ C# COBOL Component Pascal Curriculum Eiffel

  Fortran Haskell Java Language Microsoft JScript® Mercury Mondrian Oberon Oz Pascal

  Perl Python RPG Scheme SmallTalk Standard ML Microsoft Visual Basic®

• For more information on compilers, please refer to the Partners section of the Visual Studio Web site.
• Find controls and components for use with the .NET Framework Beta 2 in the Partners section of the Visual Studio Web site.
• Find the source code and white paper for .NET Pet Shop.
• To read more about customer solutions built on the .NET Framework, visit the Case Studies page for the full list of .NET Framework customer success stories.
• For more information on XML Web services, see the Web Services area on the MSDN site.

Customer Solutions Built on the .NET Framework

For more information on the case studies below, visit the Case Studies page.

Zagat Realizes New Opportunities with Microsoft .NET

Zagat Survey needed a new content management system to accommodate its expansion onto the Internet and into new rating categories. The new content management system was built using the Microsoft .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET and uses XML to collect ratings and reviews from both the Web site and the data entry provider that converts the existing paper-based Zagat surveys into an electronic format. Editors use an on-screen editing environment to access this information and create "synthesized" reviews based on survey comments. When new content is ready, the content management system again uses XML to push the information to the company's Web site, as well as into the Adobe FrameMaker–based applications used to publish Zagat's paper-based guides.

XML Web services enabled an entirely new business model for Zagat–providing many more opportunities to share and aggregate content with partners without dedicating an employee to preparing data dumps to partners. Further, XML Web services technology has enabled Zagat to introduce a new bill-by-usage model that works better for many of its customers. Zagat is able to do all of this with a development team of just 20.

Marks & Spencer Deploys Fraud Detection System

Credit card fraud is a significant threat to Marks & Spencer, a leading retailer of clothing, foods, home wares, and financial services that serves 10 million customers a week in over 300 stores in the United Kingdom. The retailer was looking for a more proactive antifraud solution to replace their current $13 billion US system.

The new transaction analysis system, based on the .NET Framework, can identify suspected fraudulent transactions almost instantly. The multiple-platform integration capabilities of the .NET Framework enable instant checks of each transaction against a number of criteria-including high-refund card accounts, statistical ranking on all transaction types, possible collusion involving employees, and more—which often reside on different databases. If a transaction meets any of these criteria, the system sends a cellular call to the store manager. Often, the store manager can get to the register before the customer in question has left.

Newport News Shipbuilding Cuts Time-to-Market by 19 Percent

Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) is the premier shipbuilder in the United States—designing, building, and maintaining the world's most sophisticated ships, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, and submarines. NNS looked to Naptheon, a wholly-owned subsidiary of NNS that specializes in business process and technology integration solutions, to build a project management application with the capacity and flexibility to handle multiple subcontractors and projects on opposite coasts, as the refitting of the USS Nimitz requires.

Naptheon used the .NET Framework to create a project management application that utilizes XML Web services for partner integration and extension to mobile wireless devices. By using the .NET Framework, Naptheon was able to cut development time and decrease time-to-market by 19 percent. Naptheon is expecting an incremental revenue increase over the next five years and an internal rate of return in excess of 100 percent due to the speed of developing and launching applications built using the .NET Framework.

Buy.com: Improving Customer Experience with .NET

Buy.com has received several awards for its innovative Web site, and the company is always looking for ways to improve the customer experience. In just two weeks, two Buy.com developers created a personalized shopping portal on the .NET Framework that provides customers with immediate access to account information, order status, and a personalized selection of products based on each shopper's personal preferences.

Buy.com also was looking for a way to distribute content to affiliates quickly and reliably. "Getting this information out to our affiliates in a timely manner required a combination of e-mails, phone calls, and file transfers in a wide variety of formats as required by each partner. These delays can lead to decreased customer satisfaction," says Navid Nobakht, director of IT applications for Buy.com. By using .NET–connected technologies to expose content for consumption by affiliate sites through XML Web services, Buy.com has gained a reusable, standards-based way to distribute real-time content to its affiliate sites.