The .NET Framework is an integral Windows component that supports building and running the next generation of applications and XML Web services. The .NET Framework is designed to fulfill the following objectives:
• To provide a consistent object-oriented programming environment whether object code is stored and executed locally, executed locally but Internet-distributed, or executed remotely.
• To provide a code-execution environment that minimizes software deployment and versioning conflicts.
• To provide a code-execution environment that promotes safe execution of code, including code created by an unknown or semi-trusted third party.
• To provide a code-execution environment that eliminates the performance problems of scripted or interpreted environments.
• To make the developer experience consistent across widely varying types of applications, such as Windows-based applications and Web-based applications.
• To build all communication on industry standards to ensure that code based on the .NET Framework can integrate with any other code.

The Framework has appeared as an alternative to Sun’s Java platform (http://java.sun.com), but has yet to receive as wide acceptance as the more established Java. A comparison between Java and .NET is beyond the scope of this document.

.NET accommodates the use of several different programming languages, as long as they conform to the Common Type System (CTS), a part of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) [14]. It is argued [15, Ch. 2] that this allows developers with different language backgrounds to still use their preferred languages and not get locked in to a specific language that the Framework supports.

The validity of this argument can be questioned. For a language to be supported as managed code under .NET, it must conform to the CTS and provide access to the Base Class Library (BCL) [15, Ch. 2]. The list of languages that fit under this categorisation is currently quite limited. A developer should use the tool most fitting for the problem, and if the best tool is a procedural language with a small library footprint requirement, an object-oriented CTS-compliant language supporting the BCL is probably not a good alternative. Nevertheless, the statement arguably holds in the context of medium to large scale application development, where the object-oriented paradigm has a wide following. Any further discussion on the choice of programming languages is beyond the scope of this document.

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