Introduction
In world of software development you will get multiple frameworks which will help you to develop various applications, Microsoft development ecosystem has two major players .NET and ASP.NET, though they are closely related, but they serve different purpose, .NET is a cross platform, open source development platform for building various kinds of applications, this platform can run program in written in multiple languages in which C# is most popular now days, while ASP.NET is a web application framework developed by Microsoft this framework is open source and a subset of .NET Framework, it was first released in January 2002, lets discuss .NET and ASP.NET in detail.
1. What is .NET?
- Definition and Overview: .NET is open-source platform for building various kinds of applications like desktop, mobile and web applications which can run on natively on any operating system. .NET system has multiple tools, libraries, and languages that simplify the process of creating applications that support modern, scalable, and high-performance software development.
Core Component
- Common Language Runtime (CLR): CLR is a major component of .NET, this manages the execution of .NET applications, this component has responsibility for loading and executing the code written in various .NET languages like C#, VB.NET, F# and many more. CLR is available in every .NET framework version, you can refer below table the CLR version in .NET framework.
- Framework Class Library (FCL): FCL is a component which supports the collection of reusables, object-oriented classes, libraries and methods etc. that can be integrated with CLR. This component contains multiple classes that supports the following functions.
- Base and user-defined data types
- Support for exceptions handling
- input/output and stream operations
- Communications with the underlying system
- Access to data
- Ability to create Windows-based GUI applications
- Ability to create web-client and server applications
- Support for creating web services
- Base Class Library (BCL): The .NET framework has a collection of basic class libraries that provide useful functions and features. These libraries can be used with any programming language which implements .NET, like VB.NET, C# etc. These libraries make it easy to handle many tasks easily like working with files, managing data, and connecting to network.
Following are the commonly used namespaces that contains useful classes and interfaces are defined in framework libraries.
Key Features
- Cross-platform support (Windows, macOS, Linux).
- Versatility in application types (web, desktop, mobile, cloud, IoT).
- Unified framework for different types of applications.
2. What is ASP.NET Framework?
Definition and Overview: ASP.NET is a server-side web application framework designed for web development to build web applications static or dynamic web pages, Asp.NET work on HTTP/HTTPS protocol, and uses the HTTP command and policies to communicate from browser to server. ASP.NET supports various programming models for building web applications.
Core Component
- ASP.NET Web Forms: ASP.NET Web Form is very important component, this component used for designing any web pages, it will let you design any web page using just drag and drop feature.
ASP.NET web form extends the event-driven model of interaction to the web applications. Browser submit the web form to the server, in response, server will return a full HTML page to the browser which you have designed.
All client-side activities are submitted to server for processing, the server will validate and return with response.
- ASP.NET MVC: ASP.NET MVC introduces new component for creating web applications by separating in three parts: Model, View and Controller, this feature helps you to manage complex applications more efficiently and you can keep your code organized.
- ASP.NET Web API: ASP.NET Web API designed for creating HTTP bases services that can be accessed by various clients, this API can be accessed from browser or mobile applications, this component is perfect to build RESTful services and interacting with data in flexible way.
- ASP.NET Core: This component is latest evolution of ASP.NET, ASP.NET Core is modern, high performance, and cross-platform. It has best features of ASP.NET MVC, Web API and web pages in single framework, this application is platform agnostic which can run on any Operating System.
Key Features of ASP.NET
- Scalability: ASP.NET is designed to handle any type of project, developers can create effortlessly any kind of small or enterprise-level application.
- Security: Security always comes on top priority in web development, this kind of application can be accessed from anywhere, to keep our application secure, ASP.NET has few build-in features for authentication and authorization, to ensure that your application is secured from threats.
- MVC Architecture: ASP.NET has a popular pattern which known as Model-View-Controller, Software designing used to implement user interface, data layer and controller logic.
Conclusion:
To summarize above topic, .NET and ASP.NET major role in software development, .NET is a broad platform that supports various types of applications, on other hand, ASP.NET specifically focuses on web applications.
For more clarity, you can refer to the video below:
