Part 2: WhatsThisAllAbout.NET ?

The .NET (pronounced dot-net) Framework does not represent a product or even a suite of products. It represents a complete framework of products, technologies, and techniques to develop the new generation of Microsoft solutions. It represents a significant change in mindset for Microsoft. For the past several years, Microsoft has been under a lot of pressure from its huge developer community. Many feel that Microsoft recognized the importance of the Internet late, losing mindshare to Sun, Oracle, IBM and others. During that time, Microsoft made a lot of enhancements to its Distributed Network Architecture (DNA) framework, but many of these were not architected to build distributed, server based applications, particularly those distributed across the Internet. In addition, the rise of Java, Linux and the open source movement collided with Microsoft’s efforts to gain market share in enterprise computing to result in calls from the development community for easier systems and software integration and interoperation. The approach Sun took with Java to address these needs appears to have been the inspiration for a number of tools and techniques, as we will see later.

The .NET framework focuses on web enabled technologies that can be easily accessed over a TCP/IP network. Central to this is the development of web services. Web services are Microsoft’s term for distributed applications which interoperate by way of web-facing XML interfaces. This means that you can send requests to a web service and receive responses from its XML interface. XML is one of the core enablers of the .NET Framework. Over the course of these tutorials we will look at a range of enabling technologies including XML, SOAP, DISCO and UDDI.