What Is .NET?

.NET is the Microsoft Web services strategy to connect information, people, systems, and devices through software. Integrated across the Microsoft platform, .NET technology provides the ability to quickly build, deploy, manage, and use connected, security-enhanced solutions with Web services. .NET-connected solutions enable businesses to integrate their systems more rapidly and in a more agile manner and help them realize the promise of information anytime, anywhere, on any device.

Microsoft. NET
The Microsoft. NET strategy was presented by Microsoft officials to the rest of the world in June 2000:
.NET is Microsoft's new Internet and Web strategy
.NET is NOT a new operating system
.NET is a new Internet and Web based infrastructure
.NET delivers software as Web Services
.NET is a framework for universal services
.NET is a server centric computing model
.NET will run in any browser on any platform
.NET is based on the newest Web standards


The Microsoft platform includes everything a business needs to develop and deploy a Web service-connected IT architecture: servers to host Web services, development tools to create them, applications to use them, and a worldwide network of more than 35,000 Microsoft Certified Partner organizations to provide any help you need.

• What Are Web Services?
  If you ask a developer what Web services are, you'll hear something like, "self-describing software modules, semantically encapsulating discrete functionality, wrapped in and accessible via standard Internet communication protocols like XML and SOAP."
  But if you ask a business leader who has implemented Web service-based solutions, you'll get a different kind of answer. You'll hear that Web services are an approach that helps the business connect with its customers, partners, and employees. They enable the business to extend existing services to new customers. They help the business work more efficiently with its partners and suppliers. They unlock information so it can flow to every employee who needs it. They reduce development time and expense for new projects. You'll hear less about what Web services are and more about what they enable the business to do.
  Benefits of Web Services
  By enabling applications to share data across different hardware platforms and operating systems, Web services provide many benefits, including:
  •Opening the door to new business opportunities by making it easy to connect with partners.Delivering dramatically more personal, integrated experiences to users through the new breed of smart devices—including PCs.
  •Saving time and money by cutting development time.
  •Increasing revenue streams by enabling businesses to easily make their own Web services available to others.
  

Connecting Applications Through Web Services
Web services are revolutionizing how applications talk to other applications—or, more broadly, how computers talk to other computers—by providing a universal data format that lets data be easily adapted or transformed. Based on XML, the universal language of Internet data exchange, Web services can communicate across platforms and operating systems, regardless of the programming language in which the applications are written.
Each Web service is a discrete unit of code that handles a limited set of tasks. However, although Web services remain independent of each other, they can loosely link themselves into a collaborating group that performs a particular task.

.NET Internet Standards
.NET is built on the following Internet standards:
HTTP, the communication protocol between Internet Applications
XML, the format for exchanging data between Internet Applications
SOAP, the standard format for requesting Web Services
UDDI, the standard to search and discover Web Services

NET Framework
The .NET Framework is the infrastructure for the new Microsoft .NET Platform.

Additional Information
The .NET plan includes a new version of the Windows operating system, a new version of Office, and a variety of new development software for programmers to build Web-based applications.
The background for .NET is part of Microsoft's new strategy to keep Windows the dominant operating system in the market, as computing begins to move away from desktop computers toward Internet enabled devices, such as hand-held computers and cell phones.
The most visual components of the new .NET framework are the new Internet Information Server 6.0, with ASP.NET and ADO.NET support, Visual Studio.NET software tools to build Web-based software, and new XML support in the SQL Server 2000 database.
Bill Gates is supervising the .NET project.
The .NET Framework is a common environment for building, deploying, and running Web Services and Web Applications.
The .NET Framework contains common class libraries - like ADO.NET, ASP.NET and Windows Forms - to provide advanced standard services that can be integrated into a variety of computer systems