What Is Microsoft .NET?

Microsoft® .NET is a set of software technologies for connecting information, people, systems, and devices. This new generation of technology is based on Web services—small building-block applications that can connect to each other as well as to other, larger applications over the Internet.

Top Reasons for Using the .NET Framework

The .NET Framework is an integral Microsoft Windows® component for building and running the next generation of applications and XML Web services. The .NET Framework deliversbusiness value with faster time-to-market, improved systems flexibility, and reduced costs.

Here are some of the best reasons to use applications built using the .NET Framework:

	Improved Reliability With advanced ways of monitoring the health of running applications, as well as isolating applications from each other,applications built using the .NET Framework stay up-and-running longer than everbefore.
	Increased Performance Thanks in part to advanced compilation and caching techniques, server applications have never been faster than with .NET technology. Customers who have moved from ASP to ASP.NET see significant increases in speed on the order of 300 to 500 percent improvements.
	Powerful, Granular Security The code access security technology in the.NET Framework was designed for today's Internet environments. The .NET Framework can collect evidence about the origin and author of an application. The .NET Framework run-time environment can then combine that evidence with administrator-set or default security policies to make fine-grained decisions about whether to run that application or enable it to access a particular resource. It can even "negotiate" with the application, for example, denying it the permission to write to a protected directory and enabling the application to choose whether it will run, given that it has been denied that permission.
	Integration with Existing Systems Applications built using the .NET Framework can connect with existing systems and packaged applications—regardless of their underlying platform.
	Mobility Support The .NET Framework provides one unified programming model for developing smart client and Web applications for both PCs and mobile devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones.
	Native XML Web Service Support The .NET Framework was designed from the ground up to support XML Web services, a model for cross-platform, distributed computing based on standard protocols such as XML, SOAP, and HTTP. Web services can be used to integrate applications running on different platforms, or to offer software as a service. With the .NET Framework, an application can be transformed into a Web service with just one simple line of code.
	Flexible Data Access The .NET Framework technology for interacting with data, ADO.NET, is designed for today's Web-based style of data access. Using ADO.NET, developers have the option of working with a platform-neutral, XML-based cache of the requested data, instead of directly manipulating the database. This approach to data access frees up database connections and results in significantly greater scalability.