Microsoft brings with its recent version of Visual Studio a new computing platform. The .NET Framework simplifies application development in the highly distributed environment of the Internet. This new platform provides a consistent object-oriented programming environment that minimizes software deployment and version conflicts, and guarantees safe execution of code. The .NET platform brings a new class library and the common language runtime (CLR). This CLR is the “foundation” of .NET Framework, somewhat like an agent that manages code execution management, providing core services such as memory management, thread management and remoting, while also enforcing strict type safety and other forms of code accuracy that ensure security and robustness.
To support the promise of the .NET Framework and the increased demands of real-world applications, changes had to be made to the underlying Active Server Pages technology. In order to provide a code-execution environment, ASP.NET eliminates the performance problems of scripted or interpreted environments, by simply removing for good scripting languages (VBscript is gone). The major changes in ASP technology are: a truly compiled code using Visual Basic.NET and C#, code is now behind files by separating user interface from logic code into different files, a new database access technology with ADO.NET, a new way of writing code, in an event-driven manner by using Web Forms and server controls. Functionality will also increasingly be exposed via Web Services, which will allow to quickly build components accessible from anywhere via HTTP, SOAP, and XML.