.NET platform

.NET is fast becoming a must-have technology for IT projects. Here, we take a look at some of the main facets of this modern, diverse and sometimes complex platform. The introductory paragraph highlights the completeness and richness of the .NET platform's libraries. It allows us to clarify the vocabulary used to differentiate between the platform elements standardized by Microsoft and those that have remained proprietary, so that we can quickly compare the different development platforms. The second paragraph focuses on .NET architecture and its main features. The third section describes how to build a distributed application in .NET, either as a fat client using .NET Remoting or Web Services technologies, or as a thin client using ASP technology. The fourth section provides a complete description of a small application, highlighting all the software building blocks mentioned above, supplemented by data access methods. A comparative evaluation and a brief presentation of the future of the platform conclude this dossier.