.Net Evolution

NET is a software development platform developed by Microsoft. It runs on Microsoft Windows OS. .NET provides tools and libraries that allow developers to develop applications and services much easily, faster and secure by using a convenient way.

1.0 Visual Studio .NET

1. Introduced CLR 1.0
2. Support for Object-oriented Web application development
3. Use of DLL class libraries

The first version of the .NET Framework was released on 13 February 2002 for Windows 98, ME, NT 4.0, 2000, and XP. Mainstream support for this version ended on 10 July 2007, and extended support ended on 14 July 2009, with the exception of Windows XP Media Center and Tablet PC editions.
1.1 Visual Studio .NET 2003

1. Features Enhancement to ASP.NET and ADO.NET
2. Built-in support for mobile ASP.NET controls
3. Security Enhancement
4. Built-in support for ODBC and databases
5. Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) support

Version 1.1 is the first major .NET Framework upgrade. It is available on its own as a redistributable package or in a software development kit, and was published on 3 April 2003. It is also part of the second release of Visual Studio .NET 2003. This is the first version of the .NET Framework to be included as part of the Windows operating system, shipping with Windows Server 2003. Mainstream support for .NET Framework 1.1 ended on 14 October 2008, and extended support ended on 8 October 2013. Since version 1.1 is a component of Windows Server 2003, it will receive extended support along with the OS until 14 July 2015. .NET Framework 1.1 is the last version to support Windows NT 4.0.
Installing .NET Framework 1.1 also provides the system support for version 1.0, except in rare instances where an application will not run because it checks the version number of a library.
Changes in 1.1 include:

• Built-in support for mobile ASP.NET controls, which was previously available as an add-on
• Enables Windows Forms assemblies to execute in a semi-trusted manner from the Internet
• Enables Code Access Security in ASP.NET applications
• Built-in support for ODBC and databases, which was previously available as an add-on
• .NET Compact Framework, a version of the .NET Framework for small devices
• Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) support
• Numerous API changes

2.0 Visual Studio 2005

1. Introduced CLR 2.0
2. Generics and generic collections
3. Partial classes
4. Nullable types
5. Anonymous methods
6. Introduced many new controls and features to ASP.NET

Version 2.0 was released on 22 January 2006. It was also released along with Visual Studio 2005, Microsoft SQL Server 2005, and BizTalk 2006. A software development kit for this version was released on 29 November 2006. It was the last version to support Windows 98 and Windows Me.
.NET Framework 2.0 with Service Pack 2 requires Windows 2000 with SP4 plus KB835732 or KB891861 update, Windows XP with SP2 plus Windows Installer 3.1. It is the last version to support for Windows 2000 although there have been some unofficial workarounds to use a subset of the functionality from Version 3.5 in Windows 2000.

ADO.NET

New features in ADO.NET include support for user-defined types (UDT), asynchronous database operations, XML data types, large value types, snapshot isolation, and new attributes that allow applications to support multiple active result sets (MARS) with SQL Server 2005.

ASP.NET

The Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 includes significant enhancements to all areas of ASP.NET. For Web page development, new controls make it easier to add commonly used functionality to dynamic Web pages. New data controls make it possible to display and edit data on an ASP.NET Web page without writing code. An improved code-behind model makes developing ASP.NET pages easier and more robust. Caching features provide several new ways to cache pages, including the ability to build cache dependency on tables in a SQL Server database.

ASP.NET accommodates a wide variety of browsers and devices. By default, controls render output that is compatible with XHTML 1.1 standards. You can use device filtering to specify different property values on the same control for different browsers.

.NET Remoting

.NET Framework Remoting now supports IPv6 addresses and the exchange of generic types. The classes in the System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels.Tcp namespace support authentication and encryption using the Security Support Provider Interface (SSPI). Classes in the new System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels.Ipc namespace allow applications on the same computer to communicate quickly without using the network. Finally, you can now configure the connection cache time-out and the number of method retries, which can improve the performance of network load-balanced remote clusters.

XML

The new System.Xml.XmlReaderSettings class allows specification of the type of verifications to be done when using a subclass of XmlReader to read XML data.

It is now possible to partially validate a DOM tree loaded within an instance of XmlDocument.

It is now possible to modify a DOM tree stored in an XmlDocument instance through the XPathNavigator cursor API.
Changes in 2.0 include:

• Full 64-bit computing support for both the x64 and the IA-64 hardware platforms
• Numerous API changes
• Microsoft SQL Server integration: Instead of using T-SQL, one can build stored procedures and triggers in any of the .NET-compatible languages
• A new hosting API for native applications wishing to host an instance of the .NET runtime: The new API gives a fine grain control on the behavior of the runtime with regards to multithreading, memory allocation and assembly loading. It was initially developed to efficiently host the runtime in Microsoft SQL Server, which implements its own scheduler and memory manager.
• Many additional and improved ASP.NET web controls
• New data controls with declarative data binding
• New personalization features for, such as support for themes, skins, master pages and webparts
• .NET Micro Framework, a version of the .NET Framework related to the Smart Personal Objects Technology initiative
• Membership provider
• Partial classes
• Nullable types
• Anonymous methods
• Iterators
• Data tables
• Common Language Runtime (CLR) 2.0
• Language support for generics built directly into the .NET CLR

3.0 Visual Studio 2005

1. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
2. Windows Communications Foundation (WCF)
3. Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), and CardSpace

.NET Framework 3.0, formerly called WinFX was released on 21 November 2006. It includes a new set of managed code APIs that are an integral part of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. It is also available for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 as a download. There are no major architectural changes included with this release; .NET Framework 3.0 uses the same CLR as .NET Framework 2.0.Unlike the previous major .NET releases there was no .NET Compact Framework release made as a counterpart of this version. Version 3.0 of the .NET Framework shipped with Windows Vista. It also shipped with Windows Server 2008 as an optional component (disabled by default).

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a next-generation presentation system for building Windows client applications. The core of WPF is a resolution-independent and vector-based rendering engine that is built to take advantage of modern graphics hardware.

WPF extends the core with a comprehensive set of application-development features that include Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), controls, data binding, layout, 2-D and 3-Dgraphics, animation, styles, templates, documents, media, text, and typography. WPF is included in the Microsoft .NET Framework, so you can build applications that incorporate other elements of the .NET Framework class library.

To support some of the more powerful WPF capabilities and to simplify the programming experience, WPF includes additional programming constructs that enhance properties and events: dependency properties and routed events.

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is Microsoft's unified programming model for building service-oriented applications. WCF allows you to build many kinds of distributed applications including "traditional" Web Services so that your services support SOAP and will therefore be compatible with older .NET (and other) technologies. WCF is not just about pure SOAP over the wire - you can work with an Info set, and create a binary representation of your SOAP message that can then be sent along with your choice of protocol. This is for those who are particularly concerned about performance and have traditionally turned to .NET remoting.

Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF)

Windows Workflow Foundation, a core component of .NET Framework 3.0, provides a programming model, run-time engine, and tools for building workflow applications.

A workflow is created and maintained by the workflow run-time engine. There can be several workflow engines within an application domain, and each workflow engine can support multiple workflows running concurrently. The run-time enables idle workflows to be unloaded from memory, persisted to a store, and reloaded whenever input is received.

Workflows can be authored in code, XAML markup, or a combination of both, known as code-separation, which is similar to the ASP.NET mode.

Windows CardSpace (WCS)

Windows CardSpace (InfoCard) is a Digital Identity to online services. Digital Identity is how a user will be electronically represented. Such as for a debit/credit card, each card has a digital identity and password. If any user uses the site on internet then he enters their username and password, for identity, but this is not secure. WCS reduces these types of problems.

WCS (originally called Info Card) helps people keep track of their digital identities as distinct information cards. If a Web site accepts WCS logins, users attempting to log in to that site will see a WCS selection. By choosing a card, users also choose a digital identity that will be used to access this site. CardSpace and the new supporting technologies will change how you authenticate into an application, whether it sits on the Web, your phone, or your desktop.

Core New Features and Improvements

Some core new features and improvements are implemented in .Net 3.0/3.5; they are:

1. Auto Implemented Property
2. Implicit Typed local variable
3. Implicitly Typed Arrays
4. Anonymous Types
5. Extension Methods (3.5 new feature)
6. Object and Collection Initializers
7. Lambda Expressions

.NET Framework 3.0 consists of four major new components:

• Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), formerly code-named Avalon: A new user interface subsystem and API based on XAML markup language, which uses 3D computer graphics hardware and Direct3D technologies
• Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), formerly code-named Indigo: A service-oriented messaging system which allows programs to interoperate locally or remotely similar to web services
• Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF): Allows building task automation and integrated transactions using workflows
• Windows CardSpace, formerly code-named InfoCard: A software component which securely stores a person's digital identities and provides a unified interface for choosing the identity for a particular transaction, such as logging in to a website

3.5 Visual Studio 2008

1. Built-In AJAX Support
2. LINQ
3. Dynamic Data
4. Multi-targeting Framework Support

Version 3.5 of the .NET Framework was released on 19 November 2007, but it is not included with Windows Server 2008. As with .NET Framework 3.0, version 3.5 uses Common Language Runtime (CLR) 2.0, that is, the same version as .NET Framework version 2.0. In addition, .NET Framework 3.5 also installs .NET Framework 2.0 SP1 and 3.0 SP1 (with the later 3.5 SP1 instead installing 2.0 SP2 and 3.0 SP2), which adds some methods and properties to the BCL classes in version 2.0 which are required for version 3.5 features such as Language Integrated Query (LINQ). These changes do not affect applications written for version 2.0, however.
As with previous versions, a new .NET Compact Framework 3.5 was released in tandem with this update in order to provide support for additional features on Windows Mobile and Windows Embedded CE devices.
The source code of the Framework Class Library in this version has been partially released (for debugging reference only) under the Microsoft Reference Source License.

Service Pack 1

The .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 was released on 11 August 2008. This release adds new functionality and provides performance improvements under certain conditions, especially with WPF where 20–45% improvements are expected. Two new data service components have been added, the ADO.NET Entity Framework and ADO.NET Data Services. Two new assemblies for web development, System.Web.Abstraction and System.Web.Routing, have been added; these are used in the ASP.NET MVC Framework and, reportedly, will be used in the future release of ASP.NET Forms applications. Service Pack 1 is included with SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1. It also featured a new set of controls called "Visual Basic Power Packs" which brought back Visual Basic controls such as "Line" and "Shape". Version 3.5 SP1 of the .NET Framework shipped with Windows 7. It also shipped with Windows Server 2008 R2 as an optional component (disabled by default).

.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Client Profile

For the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 there is also a new variant of the .NET Framework, called the ".NET Framework Client Profile", which at 28 MB is significantly smaller than the full framework and only installs components that are the most relevant to desktop applications. However, the Client Profile amounts to this size only if using the online installer on Windows XP SP2 when no other .NET Frameworks are installed or using Windows Update. When using the off-line installer or any other OS, the download size is still 250 MB.
4.0 Visual Studio 2010

1. Introduced CLR 4.0
2. Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF)
3. Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR)
4. Task Parallel Library

Application Compatibility and Deployment

The .NET Framework 4 is highly compatible with applications that are built with earlier .NET Framework versions, except for some changes that were made to improve security, standards compliance, correctness, reliability, and performance.

The .NET Framework 4 does not automatically use its version of the common language runtime to run applications that are built with earlier versions of the .NET Framework. To run older applications with .NET Framework 4, you must compile your application with the target .NET Framework version specified in the properties for your project in Visual Studio, or you can specify the supported runtime with the <supportedRuntime> Element in an application configuration file.

Core New Features and Improvements

Some new features are introduced in .Net framework 4.0.

The following sections describe new features and improvements provided by the common language runtime and the base class libraries.

1. BigInteger and Complex Numbers
2. Tuples
3. Covariance and Contravariance
4. Dynamic Language Runtime

Managed Extensibility Framework

The Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) is a new library in the .NET Framework 4 that helps you build extensible and composable applications. MEF enables you to specify points where an application can be extended, to expose services to offer to other extensible applications and to create parts for consumption by extensible applications.

It also enables easy discoverability of available parts based on metadata, without the need to load the assemblies for the parts.

Parallel Computing

The .NET Framework 4 introduces a new programming model for writing multithreaded and asynchronous code that greatly simplifies the work of application and library developers. The new model enables developers to write efficient, fine-grained, and scalable parallel code in a natural idiom without having to work directly with threads or the thread pool. The new System.Threading.Tasks namespace and other related types support this new model.

Web

ASP.NET version 4 introduces new features in the following areas:

• Core services, including a new API that lets you extend caching, support for compression for session-state data, and a new application preload manager (autostart feature).
• Web Forms, including more integrated support for ASP.NET routing, enhanced support for Web standards, updated browser support, new features for data controls, and new features for view state management.
• Web Forms controls, including a new Chart control.
• MVC, including new helper methods for views, support for partitioned MVC applications, and asynchronous controllers.
• Dynamic Data, including support for existing Web applications, support for many-to-many relationships and inheritance, new field templates and attributes, and enhanced data filtering.
• Microsoft Ajax, including additional support for client-based Ajax applications in the Microsoft Ajax Library.
• Visual Web Developer, including improved IntelliSense for JScript, new auto-complete snippets for HTML and ASP.NET markup, and enhanced CSS compatibility.
• Deployment, including new tools for automating typical deployment tasks.
• Multi-targeting, including better filtering for features that are not available in the target version of the .NET Framework

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Features in 4.0

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) version 4 contains changes and improvements in the following areas:

• New controls, including Calendar, Data Grid, and Date Picker.
• VisualStateManager supports changing states of controls.
• Touch and Manipulation enables you to create applications that receive input from multiple touches simultaneously on Windows 7.
• Graphics and animation supports layout rounding, Pixel Shader version 3.0, cached composition, and easing functions.
• Text has improved text rendering and supports customizing the caret color and selection color in text boxes.
• Binding is supported on the Command property of an InputBinding, dynamic objects, and the Text property.
• XAML browser applications (XBAPs) support communication with the Web page and support full-trust deployment.
• New types in the System.Windows.Shell namespace enable you to communicate with the Windows 7 taskbar and pass data to the Windows shell.
• The WPF and Silverlight Designer in Visual Studio 2010 has various designer improvements to help create WPF or Silverlight applications.

Windows Communication Foundation Features in 4.0

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) provides the following improvements:

• Configuration-based activation: Removes the requirement for having an .svc file.
• System.Web.Routing integration: Gives you more control over your service's URL by allowing the use of extensionless URLs.
• Multiple IIS site bindings support: Allows you to have multiple base addresses with the same protocol on the same Web site.
• Routing Service: Allows you to route messages based on content.
• Support for WS-Discovery: Allows you to create and search for discoverable services.
• Standard endpoints: Predefined endpoints that allow you to specify only certain properties.
• Workflow services: Integrates WCF and WF by providing activities to send and receive messages, the ability to correlate messages based on content, and a workflow service host.

Windows Workflow Foundation Features in 4.0

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) provides improvements in the following areas:

• Improved workflow activity model: The Activity class provides the base abstraction of workflow behavior.
• Rich composite activity options: Workflows benefit from new flow-control activities that model traditional flow-control structures, such as Flowchart, TryCatch, and Switch<T>.
• Expanded built-in activity library: New features of the activity library include new flow-control activities, activities for manipulating member data, and activities for controlling transactions.

Key focuses for this release are:

• Parallel Extensions to improve support for parallel computing, which target multi-core or distributed systems. To this end, technologies like PLINQ (Parallel LINQ), a parallel implementation of the LINQ engine, and Task Parallel Library, which exposes parallel constructs via method calls., are included.
• New Visual Basic .NET and C# language features, such as implicit line continuations, dynamic dispatch, named parameters, and optional parameters.
• Support for Code Contracts.
• Inclusion of new types to work with arbitrary-precision arithmetic (System.Numerics.BigInteger) and complex numbers (System.Numerics.Complex).
• Introduce Common Language Runtime (CLR) 4.0.

History

Microsoft announced the intention to ship .NET Framework 4 on 29 September 2008. The Public Beta was released on 20 May 2009.
On 28 July 2009, a second release of the .NET Framework 4 beta was made available with experimental software transactional memory support. This functionality is not available in the final version of the framework.
On 19 October 2009, Microsoft released Beta 2 of the .NET Framework 4. At the same time, Microsoft announced the expected launch date for .NET Framework 4 as 22 March 2010. This launch date was subsequently delayed to 12 April 2010.
On 10 February 2010, a release candidate was published: Version:RC.
On 12 April 2010, the final version of .NET Framework 4.0 was launched alongside the final release of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.
On 18 April 2011, version 4.0.1 was released supporting some customer-demanded fixes for Windows Workflow Foundation. Its design-time component, which requires Visual Studio 2010 SP1, adds a workflow state machine designer.
On 19 October 2011, version 4.0.2 was released supporting some new features of Microsoft SQL Server.
Version 4.0.3 was released on 4 March 2012.

Windows Server AppFabric

After the release of the .NET Framework 4, Microsoft released a set of enhancements, named Windows Server AppFabric, for application server capabilities in the form of AppFabric Hosting and in-memory distributed caching support.

4.5 Visual Studio 2012

1. Features Enhancements to CLR 4.0
2. Async Support
3. Support for building Windows Store apps
4. Features Enhancement to WPF, WCF, WF, and ASP.NET

.NET Framework 4.5 was released on 15 August 2012; a set of new or improved features were added into this version. The .NET Framework 4.5 is only supported on Windows Vista or later. The .NET Framework 4.5 uses Common Language Runtime 4.0, with some additional runtime features.

.NET for Metro style apps

Metro-style apps are designed for specific form factors and leverage the power of the Windows operating system. A subset of the .NET Framework is available for building Metro style apps for Windows 8 using C# or Visual Basic. This subset is called .NET APIs for apps.
The version of .NET Framework, runtime and libraries, used for Metro style apps is a part of the new Windows Runtime, which is the new platform and application model for Metro style apps. It is an ecosystem that houses many platforms and languages, including .NET Framework, C++ and HTML5/JavaScript.

Framework Core

Core Features

• Ability to limit how long the regular expression engine will attempt to resolve a regular expression before it times out.
• Ability to define the culture for an application domain.
• Console support for Unicode (UTF-16) encoding.
• Support for versioning of cultural string ordering and comparison data.
• Better performance when retrieving resources.
• Zip compression improvements to reduce the size of a compressed file.
• Ability to customize a reflection context to override default reflection behavior through the CustomReflectionContext class.

Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF)

Asynchronous operations

In the .NET Framework 4.5, new asynchronous features were added to the C# and Visual Basic languages. These features add a task-based model for performing asynchronous operations.

ASP.NET

• Support for new HTML5 form types.
• Support for model binders in Web Forms. These let you bind data controls directly to data-access methods, and automatically convert user input to and from .NET Framework data types.
• Support for unobtrusive JavaScript in client-side validation scripts.
• Improved handling of client script through bundling and minification for improved page performance.
• Integrated encoding routines from the AntiXSS library (previously an external library) to protect from cross-site scripting attacks.
• Support for WebSocket protocol.
• Support for reading and writing HTTP requests and responses asynchronously.
• Support for asynchronous modules and handlers.
• Support for content distribution network (CDN) fallback in the ScriptManager control.

Networking

1. Provides a new programming interface for HTTP applications: System.Net.Http namespace and System.Net.Http.Headers namespaces are added
2. Improved internationalization and IPv6 support
3. RFC-compliant URI support
4. Support for internationalized domain name (IDN) parsing
5. Support for Email Address Internationalization (EAI)

4.5.1 Visual Studio 2013

1. Includes performance and debugging improvements
2. Support for automatic binding redirection
3. Expanded support for Windows Store apps

.NET Framework 4.5.1

The release of .NET Framework 4.5.1 was announced on 17 October 2013 along Visual Studio 2013. This version requires Windows Vista SP2 and later and is included with Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2.

.NET Framework 4.5.2

The release of .NET Framework 4.5.2 was announced on 5 May 2014. For Windows Forms applications, improvements were made for high DPI scenarios. For ASP.NET, higher reliability HTTP header inspection and modification methods are available as is a new way to schedule background asynchronous worker tasks.

.NET for Windows Store Apps

Windows Store apps are designed for specific form factors and leverage the power of the Windows operating system. A subset of the .NET Framework 4.5 is available for building Windows Store apps for Windows by using C# or Visual Basic.

Portable Class Libraries

The Portable Class Library project in Visual Studio 2012 enables you to write and build managed assemblies that work on multiple .NET Framework platforms. Using a Portable Class Library project, you choose the platforms (such as Windows Phone and .NET for Windows Store apps) to target.

ASP.NET 4.5

ASP.NET 4.5 includes the following new features:

• Support for new HTML5 form types.
• Support for model binders in Web Forms. These let you bind data controls directly to data-access methods, and automatically convert user input to and from .NET Framework data types.
• Support for unobtrusive JavaScript in client-side validation scripts.
• Improved handling of client script through bundling and minification for improved page performance.
• Integrated encoding routines from the AntiXSS library (previously an external library) to protect from cross-site scripting attacks.
• Support for WebSockets protocol.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Features in 4.5

In the .NET Framework 4.5, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) contains changes and improvements in the following areas:

• The new Ribbon control, which enables you to implement a ribbon user interface that hosts a Quick Access Toolbar, Application Menu, and tabs.
• The new INotifyDataErrorInfo interface, which supports synchronous and asynchronous data validation.
• New features for the VirtualizingPanel and Dispatcher classes.
• Improved performance when displaying large sets of grouped data, and by accessing collections on non-UI threads.
• Data binding to static properties, data binding to custom types that implement the ICustomTypeProvider interface, and retrieval of data binding information from a binding expression.
• Repositioning of data as the values change (live shaping).
• Ability to check whether the data context for an item container is disconnected.
• Ability to set the amount of time that should elapse between property changes and data source updates.
• Improved support for implementing weak event patterns. Also, events can now accept markup extensions.

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Features in 4.5

In the .NET Framework 4.5, the following features have been added to make it simpler to write and maintain Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) applications:

• Simplification of generated configuration files.
• Support for contract-first development.
• Ability to configure ASP.NET compatibility mode more easily.
• Changes in default transport property values to reduce the likelihood that you will have to set them.
• Updates to the XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas class to reduce the likelihood that you will have to manually configure quotas for XML dictionary readers.
• Validation of WCF configuration files by Visual Studio as part of the build process, so you can detect configuration errors before you run your application.
• New asynchronous streaming support.
• New HTTPS protocol mapping to make it easier to expose an endpoint over HTTPS with Internet Information Services (IIS).
• Ability to generate metadata in a single WSDL document by appending ?singleWSDL to the service URL.
• Websockets support to enable true bidirectional communication over ports 80 and 443 with performance characteristics similar to the TCP transport.
• Support for configuring services in code.
• XML Editor tooltips.

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) Features in 4.5

Several new features have been added to Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) in the .NET Framework 4.5. These new features include:

• State machine workflows, which were first introduced as part of the .NET Framework 4.0.1 (.NET Framework 4 Platform Update 1). This update included several new classes and activities that enabled developers to create state machine workflows. These classes and activities were updated for the .NET Framework 4.5 to include:
• The ability to set breakpoints on states.
• The ability to copy and paste transitions in the workflow designer.
• Designer support for shared trigger transition creation.