.NET Framework Advantages

The .NET Framework offers a number of advantages to developers. The following paragraphs describe them in detail.

Consistent Programming Model

Different programming languages have different approaches for doing a task. For example, accessing data with a VB 6.0 application and a VC++ application is totally different. When using different programming languages to do a task, a disparity exists among the approach developers use to perform the task. The difference in techniques comes from how different languages interact with the underlying system that applications rely on.

With .NET, for example, accessing data with a VB .NET and a C# .NET looks very similar apart from slight syntactical differences. Both the programs need to import the System.Data namespace, both the programs establish a connection with the database and both the programs run a query and display the data on a data grid. The VB 6.0 and VC++ example mentioned in the first paragraph explains that there is more than one way to do a particular task within the same language. The .NET example explains that there's a unified means of accomplishing the same task by using the .NET Class Library, a key component of the .NET Framework.

The functionality that the .NET Class Library provides is available to all .NET languages resulting in a consistent object model regardless of the programming language the developer uses.

Direct Support for Security

Developing an application that resides on a local machine and uses local resources is easy. In this scenario, security isn't an issue as all the resources are available and accessed locally. Consider an application that accesses data on a remote machine or has to perform a privileged task on behalf of a nonprivileged user. In this scenario security is much more important as the application is accessing data from a remote machine.

With .NET, the Framework enables the developer and the system administrator to specify method level security. It uses industry-standard protocols such as TCP/IP, XML, SOAP and HTTP to facilitate distributed application communications. This makes distributed computing more secure because .NET developers cooperate with network security devices instead of working around their security limitations.

Simplified Development Efforts

Let's take a look at this with Web applications. With classic ASP, when a developer needs to present data from a database in a Web page, he is required to write the application logic (code) and presentation logic (design) in the same file. He was required to mix the ASP code with the HTML code to get the desired result.

ASP.NET and the .NET Framework simplify development by separating the application logic and presentation logic making it easier to maintain the code. You write the design code (presentation logic) and the actual code (application logic) separately eliminating the need to mix HTML code with ASP code. ASP.NET can also handle the details of maintaining the state of the controls, such as contents in a textbox, between calls to the same ASP.NET page.

Another advantage of creating applications is debugging. Visual Studio .NET and other third party providers provide several debugging tools that simplify application development. The .NET Framework simplifies debugging with support for Runtime diagnostics. Runtime diagnostics helps you to track down bugs and also helps you to determine how well an application performs. The .NET Framework provides three types of Runtime diagnostics: Event Logging, Performance Counters and Tracing.

Easy Application Deployment and Maintenance

The .NET Framework makes it easy to deploy applications. In the most common form, to install an application, all you need to do is copy the application along with the components it requires into a directory on the target computer. The .NET Framework handles the details of locating and loading the components an application needs, even if several versions of the same application exist on the target computer. The .NET Framework ensures that all the components the application depends on are available on the computer before the application begins to execute.