.NET in the real world

摘要

Platform allows for reusing legacy program code. Alittle more than three years ago, Microsoft held its professional developers conference in Orlando, Fla., where it first revealed its next generation platform for Windows and Internet software development—.NET. Microsoft's initiative is broad based and ambitious and revolves around the .NET Framework, which contains the execution platform Common Language Runtime (CLR), plus extensive class libraries providing rich built-in functionality. At its core, the .NET framework embraces XML and SOAP to provide a high level of integration of software. The most important part of the platform is the .NET Framework. It consists of the CLR environment, a just-in-time compiler, and a set of libraries packaged using the .NET object model. One important feature of the .NET Framework is that it is language neutral. This happens by translating all .NET languages into a common language called Intermediary Language (IL). It is on this level languages interoperate. There is also a subset of rules defined by a Common Language Specification that all .NET-compliant languages have to comply to. The language neutrality may be of interest when creating applications for the manufacturing industry, because it allows you to reuse legacy program code and then compile it into new .NET-based systems. Manufacturing industry systems often consist of large code bases that users rarely rewrite. For example Fujitsu Software, implementer of COBOL for .NET, estimated that as late as year 2000, 70% of production business automation systems are still in COBOL. It is of course also possible to recompile legacy C/C++ code into managed IL code, which may be of more practical interest when rewriting manufacturing industry solutions. The programming language IL files package together in deployable units called assemblies. These assemblies load into the Common Language Runtime (part of the .NET Framework), compiled by the just-in-time IL compiler, and executed within the CLR. The CLR provides many features we usually associate with a particular language, including garbage collection, type definitions, polymorphic method resolution, error handling, and the deployment model.