Microsoft .NET Overview

The Microsoft .NET Framework is a software technology that provides a new programming interface to Windows services and APIs, and an amazing convergence of many technologies. The Microsoft .NET Framework is a set of languages, including C#, J#, and VB.NET; a set of development tools, including Visual Studio .NET; a comprehensive class library for building web services and web and Windows applications; as well as the Common Language Runtime (CLR).It also includes the Base Class Libraries (BCL), offering ways to utilize Collections, I/O, networking, among others. A complex stack of libraries is built on top of the BCL, including technologies like ADO.NET for database access, XML APIs to manipulate XML data, and Windows Forms to display rich user interfaces (UIs). These components collectively form the largest part of the Microsoft .NET Framework.