.NET History & Information

NET History & Information

Many people are found confused about what exactly is .NET. Well, the Microsoft .Net is a new internet technology or rather strategy introduced by Microsoft. .Net was originally known as the NGWS (Next Generation Windows Services) which was said to be an Internet based platform of Next Generation Windows Services. Before the official announcement of .Net, NGWS was the term used to describe the above phrase.

According to Steve Ballmer who quoted in January 2000, “Delivering an Internet-based platform of Next Generation Windows Services is the top priority of our company. The breakthroughs we’re talking about here include changes to the programming model, to the user interface, to the application integration model, the file system, new XML schema…..”

Some people even considered Microsoft .Net as a new operating system; which is not the case. Microsoft .Net is net Web and Internet Strategy introduced by Microsoft. .Net introduces improved programming models and provide new and better Web based infrastructure. One of the key facts about .Net is that it delivers software as web services and the framework provided by Microsoft .Net is for universal services. Another important fact about .Net that you should always remember is that it can run on any browser and on any platform. Microsoft .Net is purely based on new web standards and is based on a new model; server centric computing model.

The Microsoft’s .Net is based on the new web/internet standards. For our readers who are not aware of the new web standards, here are some of the main web standards on which .Net is based:

• UDDI: is a standard on which .Net is based in order to discover & search various Web Services. Remember that in Microsoft’s .Net terminology, Software is called as web services.
• SOAP: defines the standard format to be used when requesting any Web Service.
• HTTP: the classic standard that defines the communication protocol between various Internet Applications regardless of their platform.
• XML: defines the format to be used for exchanging data between various Internet applications.

One of the most important terms that you will come across after .Net is the .Net Framework. Do you have any idea about what exactly is the .Net Framework? The .Net Framework, by definition, is the infrastructure for Microsoft .Net Platform. The .Net Framework provides a unique environment that can be used for developing, deploying and executing various Web Services independent of the platform.

For our new learners, one thing to remember here about .Net Framework is that it contains various common libraries like ASP.NET etc and it also contains various Windows Forms. The .Net Framework supports C++, Visual Basic, Jscript, COBOL, Perl, C#, Python, Smalltalk and various other languages. All of these languages are used in the development of various platform independent .Net Applications.

The first step that our learners should take here is to get the Visual Studio.Net that will provide them with a perfect development environment and the user won’t feel, by working on Visual Studio.Net, that he is handling different developing languages at the same time.