Summary

We've taken a broad look at the scope of .NET and the various technologies involved. Initially, we explored the need for .NET, explaining some of the common deployment and versioning problems Windows DNA developers face, and how these problems are due to the underlying technologies such as COM on which the Windows DNA platform is built.

We showed some of the design goals for .NET, and then explored the Common Language Runtime (CLR), the core technology upon which the .NET Framework is built. This included a discussion of how the CLR architecture works, and how it solves many of the problems of the Windows DNA platform.

We discussed the four key components of the .NET Framework: Application Development Technologies, Class Libraries, Base Class Libraries, and the CLR. You saw how these are built on top of each other, and together provide a very powerful and productive development platform.

Finally, we reviewed the design goals of ASP.NET, looking at how these features work.

The next chapter will take a closer look at the syntax of some of the languages you can use to build .NET applications, investigating the advantages and disadvantages of these languages, and their similarities and differences in more detail.