The .NET Framework 4.0, is Microsoft's platform for building applications that have visually stunning user experiences, seamless and secure communication, and the ability to model a range of business processes. By providing you with a comprehensive and consistent programming model and a common set of APIs, the .NET Framework helps you to build applications that work the way you want, in the programming language you prefer, across software, services, and devices.

Secure, Multi-Language Development Platform

Developers and IT professionals can count on .NET as a powerful and robust software development technology that provides the security advancements, management tools, and updates you need to build, test, and deploy highly reliable and secure software. .NET provides a multi-language development platform, so you can work in the programming language you prefer. The Common Language Runtime (CLR) provides support for powerful, static languages like Visual Basic and Visual C#, and the advent of the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) means that dynamic languages, such as Managed Jscript, Iron Ruby and Iron Python, are also supported.

 

 

Next-Generation User Experiences

 

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provides a unified framework for building applications and high-fidelity experiences in Windows that blend together application UI, documents, and media content, while exploiting the full power of the computer. WPF offers developers support for 2D and 3D graphics, hardware accelerated effects, scalability to different form factors, interactive data visualization, and superior content readability.

 

Silverlight, a runtime that contains a subset of the .NET Framework, helps developers expand their reach by providing a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET-based media experiences, advertising and rich interactive applications (RIAs).

 

Secure, Reliable Web Services For service-oriented programming Windows Communication Foundation unifies a broad array of distributed systems capabilities in a composable and extensible architecture, spanning transports, security systems, messaging patterns, encodings, network topologies, and hosting models.

 

 

Flexible Data Access Options

 

ADO.NET, is a set of classes that expose data access services to the .NET programmer. ADO.NET provides a rich set of components for creating distributed, data-sharing applications. It is an integral part of the .NET Framework, providing access to relational, XML, and application data. ADO.NET supports a variety of development needs, including the creation of front-end database clients and middle-tier business objects used by applications, tools, languages, or Internet browsers.