Tips n Tracks

Microsoft .NET platform defines a standard around which a system can be developed. Microsoft .NET platform provides countless opportunities for different services and systems to interact, allowing programmers to develop powerful solutions for the internet. A major theme of Microsoft .NET platform is the idea of Web services, allowing software to communicate directly with other software using Internet technologies. The .NET Framework and Visual Studio.NET, two more core aspects of this initiative, provide a multi-language environment in which developers can create Web services and other kinds of applications.

Microsoft .NET platform is an umbrella term that applies to a wide collection of products and technologies from Microsoft. The technologies that Microsoft has placed under the .NET umbrella today include the following:

• The .NET Framework
• Visual Studio.NET
• .NET Building Block Services
• The .NET Enterprise Servers
• The operating system (OS)

Block Diagram of .net platform

At the lowest layer lies the operating system (OS), which can be one of a variety of Windows platforms, including Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows ME, and Windows CE.

On top of the operating system is a collection of specialized server products that shortens the time required to develop large-scale business systems. These server products include Application Center, BizTalk Server, Commerce Server, Exchange Server, Host Integration Server, Internet Security and Acceleration Server, and SQL Server.

The top layer of the .NET architecture is a development tool called Visual Studio .NET (VS.NET), which makes possible the rapid development of web services and other applications. A successor to Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0, VS.NET is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that supports four different languages and features such as cross-language debugging and the XML Schema Editor.