Chapter One. What's in a Name?

This chapter is an executive summary of all the technologies in the .NET Framework. You will learn what .NET, the .NET Framework, and the .NET Framework Software Development Kit (SDK) are. You'll also learn how Visual Studio .NET fits into the picture. I define the key technologies in the .NET Framework: the Common Language Runtime (CLR), ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Extensible Markup Language (XML), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), and XML Web Services. You will also learn how Microsoft's older technologies like Component Object Model (COM), COM+, the Windows Distributed Internet Applications Architecture (Windows DNA), and ActiveX still fit into the picture, and I'll talk about how .NET compares to the Java programming language, runtime and libraries.