Introduction

From a developer productivity perspective, the .NET Framework class library (sometimes known as FCL) provides the biggest time savings. Included in the FCL are numerous classes organized in their respective namespaces (System, System.Xml, System.Data, System.IO, System.Text, System.Remoting, System.Windows.Forms, System.Web, and so on) for making common development tasks much easier than before. Although several programming libraries ”some from Microsoft and a large number from independent software vendors ”have existed to do similar tasks before, the programming models were quite different. What works in VB won't work in Visual C++. Also, because no standard existed, several implementations were available. .NET FCL provides a set of core libraries that can be used as a base set assumed to be available with the .NET runtime by a .NET developer. This greatly simplifies the work of the developer or architect because he or she can focus on the core business logic of the application rather than creating set of utilities and class libraries to do common tasks. In a number of ways, the notion of a significantly large class library was conceived by the Java programming language, which even in its earliest version included a large set of classes and packages. .NET FCL can be utilized in all .NET supported programming languages.

At times, the large number of classes available in the .NET FCL can be overwhelming. Hence, apart from being an introduction to the key classes in the .NET Framework class library, an objective of this chapter is to enlist some of the core .NET classes that you will be interacting with, whether you are developing .NET applications, Web services, mobile applications, or components .