Microsoft framework what is

NET Framework 3. See Download. NET Framework for a complete list. NET Framework and will continue to be distributed with future releases of Windows. As long as it is installed on a supported version of Windows,. See the. NET Framework support policy for more details. Our step-by-step tutorial will help you get. NET running on your computer.

Get Started. Home Learning center What is. NET Framework? What is. NET Framework is the original implementation of. It supports running websites, services, desktop apps, and more on Windows. NET is open source on GitHub. NET was previously called. NET Core. NET implementation for running apps on all the major mobile operating systems, including iOS and Android.

Architecture of. NET Framework The two major components of. It provides services like thread management, garbage collection, type-safety, exception handling, and more.

It provides types for strings, dates, numbers, etc. The Class Library includes APIs for reading and writing files, connecting to databases, drawing, and more. Release history Supported versions Versions of. Version Release date End of support. NET Framework used for? Who uses. Software developers and the users of their applications both use.

NET Framework: Users of applications built with the. NET Framework need to have. NET Framework installed. In most cases,. NET Framework is already installed with Windows. If needed, you can download. NET Core and framework — download it here; and. NET developer community — all about chatter and support with links to social media, forums, blogs, live workshops, and organizations like. NET foundation. OOP is a development model for breaking down software into smaller pieces that are easier to manage and combine.

OOP compartmentalizes data into objects, i. A modular structure helps define the behavior of objects and their interactions without managing object inner attributes.

OOP simplifies programming by making the code manageable, easier to test, and respond to recurring issues. It also eliminates unnecessary programming and generally means less coding for developers. NET makes it possible to reuse code and components, save time and — subsequently — the cost of development.

Caching means keeping data in a temporary storage place to call it faster when needed. The stored data is the result of an earlier information request or the duplicate of information stored in other places that would take longer to retrieve from. The caching system in. NET is robust and simple to use. The Object Cache class allows developers to create a custom cache implementation to be used for improving performance and scalability of Windows client and server applications.

An Integrated Development Environment IDE is a single product for programmers that makes application development easier by providing all the tools needed to write and test software. Visual Studio is integrated with. NET and provides the features of language-specific environment.

Additionally, Visual Studio Marketplace offers a wide range of editor extensions from Microsoft and other providers to enable team collaboration, continuous integration , third-party connections, cloud development management, etc.

NET Core is a cross-platform. Unlike the original. NET framework — which is not completely open —. NET Core has a fully open source code that ensures that a wide engineering community can continuously contribute to its development.

This enables companies to reach the widest variety of platforms staying within the. NET ecosystem. At the same time, cross-platform design ensures that the whole. NET community with a large pool of different engineering skillsets shares experience. One of the important. NET Core features is flexible deployment.

It can be installed as a part of your application or require a separate installation. The modular design contemplates including all the dependencies you need. The deployment itself is as easy as copying a folder. Another benefit is that you can have multiple. NET Core versions running side by side on the same machine to cover different projects and seamlessly perform deployment tasks.

Since , the. NET ecosystem has been enhanced with a large class library called. NET Standard. NET Core, and Xamarin. These are used to work with common functions such as graphics rendering, database interaction, and manipulations with XML documents. Prior to. NET Standard, a programmer had to redevelop an application or a library for the new platform and then distribute all the updates across various platforms. Currently, the library supports all dependent libraries across applications.

However, you should check version compatibility to successfully leverage. You may check your product compatibility with. NET Standard here and track updates on the Microsoft documentation site.

NET has a large community of developers. Interestingly, it unites engineers from small, midsize, and enterprise-grade companies. This means that almost any issue can be resolved with the help of community members.

NET Core is open source, its libraries, runtime, and compiler are available on GitHub and have many contributions. NET took fourth place among the most popular web frameworks while.

NET and. NET Core placed second and third respectively as the most used frameworks beyond web development. Besides that,. NET Foundation that fosters open development and teamwork around the. NET community and commercial developers use it as the main forum for idea exchange. NET has built-in automatic monitoring. The Windows Web Server strictly monitors web pages and applications that run on it.

In case any issues such as the memory leaks or infinite loops occur, it immediately alerts about them. This allows for directly correcting these behaviors and creating new processes. The monitoring ensures higher stability and transparency of. NET applications. Both compilers are highly regarded by the.

NET community as Microsoft actively improves them. Roslyn has been available since In , it became open source and in was included in Visual Studio. This means that unlike traditional black-box compilation, with Roslyn, developers can read the compilation data at every stage. The full transition from the old JIT was completed in with the idea of improved performance. And, generally, engineers agree that RyuJIT is faster.

According to. But the point is, Microsoft is really good at what they are doing. Microsoft does its best to further evolve. The transition to. NET Core was a major step in terms of the ecosystem development, as it embraced cloud and focused on performance improvements.

In Microsoft introduced the ML. NET framework for C and F languages. NET eventually becomes a one-stop platform for anyone. NET5 planned in fall Even though. NET is considered one of the strongest engineering platforms out there due to extensive infrastructure and proven product development history, it comes with a set of problems.

As we mentioned above,. The support of data-oriented software application development in. Entity is an object-relational mapper ORM that links object-oriented. Another problem is that the framework may eventually be abandoned by Microsoft. On the bright side, you can always choose another ORM alternative, so it remains a debatable point.

Mostly, your expenses will be spent on Visual Studio IDE and other additional collaboration and quality assurance services that Microsoft offers to simplify your work. However, you still can try to become a Microsoft Partner to have a number of subscriptions for free. For non-profit and educational purposes, there is also the free Visual Studio Community. Even though you can use. NET engineering, which also comes with licensing costs.

Perhaps, this problem cripples all Microsoft products not. The runtime environment is really a way of abstracting the application from the actual hardware on which the application runs. There are several advantages to having applications run inside a runtime environment. The biggest is portability. That code can then be run on any hardware on which. NET is supported. While the platform was ostensibly designed to support hardware other than Windows-based PCs, however, its proprietary nature led to it mostly being used for Windows applications.

Microsoft has created other implementations of. NET to help resolve this. Mono is a free and open-source project designed to provide compatibility between. NET applications and other platforms, especially Linux. NET Core implementation is also free and open-source framework designed to bring lightweight, modular apps to multiple platforms. As you can imagine, a framework like. NET can be a real boon on the development side of things.

It allows developers to write code using their preferred language and be assured that code can run wherever the framework is supported. NET Framework has a somewhat tortuous history, and has seen a number of versions over the years.

Typically, the newest version of. NET available would be included in the release of each version of Windows. Not all applications worked with the newer versions. NET installed on a PC. There were essentially three ways that any particular version of the. NET Framework would get installed:. Fortunately, things are smoother in modern versions of Windows. Sometime during the Windows Vista days, two important things happened. NET Framework 3.

That version was reworked to include components from versions 2 and 3. Apps that required earlier versions would now work if you just had version 3.

Secondly, upgrades to the. Together, these two things meant that developers could now pretty much rely on users having the proper components already installed and no longer had to ask users to perform additional installations. When Windows 8 rolled around, a new, completely redesigned.

NET Framework version 4 came with it. Version 4 and up does not feature backwards compatibility with older versions. Apps written to versions 3. Windows pretty much handles it all for you. Windows 8 and Windows 10 include versions 3. They are installed on a first-time-needed basis, so the first time you install an app that needs one of those versions, Windows will add it automatically.

You have options for adding version 3. The first time you install an app that needs one of the available versions, Windows will add it for you behind the scenes. NET itself on modern versions of Windows. Since both required versions are included with Windows and installed as needed, app installations are pretty seamless.

On older versions of Windows think XP and Vista , you often had to uninstall and reinstall the various versions of. NET to get things working. You also had to jump through hoops to make sure the right versions of. NET were installed for the apps that needed them. Now, Windows handles that stuff for you. That said, if you are having troubles that you think are related to the. NET framework, there are a few steps you can take.