What's New in the .NET Framework 2.0

Distributed Computing gives support for FTP client requests, caching of HTTP resources, automatic proxy discovery, and obtaining network traffic and statistical information. The Web server class has now been added to the namespace and this can be used to create simple web server for responding to HTTP requests. Output trace information for application debugging and diagnostics are generated by classes. Performance and security enhancements have been added to the System.Net.Sockets.Socket and System.Uri classes. Support for SOAP 1.2 and nullable elements have been added to System.Web.Services. Channel security features have been added to System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels. Authentication, encryption and load balancing are now supported by the TCP channel.

EventLog Enhancements enable the use of custom DLLs for messages, parameters and categories.

Expanded Certificate Management now supports X.509 certificate stores, chains and extensions. Certificates can be signed and verified without platform invoke using X.509 certificates. PKCS7 signatures, encryption and CMS are also supported

FTP Support is now integrated into 2.0 with the introduction of the classes System.Net.WebRequest, System.Net.WebResponse and System.Net.WebClient.

Generics and Generic Collection allow the user create flexible, reusable code. The generics act as templates that allow classes, methods, structures, interfaces and methods to be declared and defined with an Unspecified parameters. The types are specified only when the generic is used. System.Namespace and System.Collections.Generic provide the generic classes and methods. While the latter namespace supports strongly typed collections, System.Nullable provides for a standard representation of optional values. VB.NET, C# and C++ support generics. Generic types and methods can be examined and manipulated at runtime using reflection which has been extended. New members have been added to System.Type and System.Reflection.MethodInfo to identify generic types, obtain type parameter lists or create specific types.

Globalization has been extended with five new features to support custom cultures and languages. Minor customizations of existing cultures or creation of new cultures becomes possible with the new .NET 2.0. Encoding and decoding are done by mapping a Unicode character to and from a stream of bytes that are transferred to a physical medium such as a disk or communication line. Failure to complete the mapping operation can be compensated using the new encoding and decoding fallback feature supported by several classes in the System.Text Namespace. The .NET framework also supports the latest normalization standard defined by the Unicode consortium and the process converts character representations of text to a standard form that can be compared for equivalence.

I/O Enhancements have made the various I/O classes usable and functional. Users can now read and write text files easily and obtain information about a drive if needed. The System.IO.Compression namespace helps read and write data with the GZIP compression and decompression standard described by the IETF REC 1951 and RFC 1952 specifications.

Manifest Based Activation provides support for loading and activating applications using a manifest. This is essential for ClickOnce applications which use the manifest to load the application as against the traditional usage of the assembly to load the application.

.NET Framework Remoting now supports IPv6 addresses and the exchange of generic types. The process of authentication and encryption is supported by System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels.Tcp namespace. The System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels.Ipc permit applications in the same computer communicate with each other without using the network. A connection cache time out can be configured and the number of method retries can be set to improve network performance where remote clusters are involved.

Local computer Network configuration and Usage Information can be obtained by using the classes in the System.Net.NetworkInformation namespace. IP, IPv4, IPv6, TCP and UDP network traffic statistics can be obtained. Local computers network adapter information can also be viewed by users.

Ping enables the user verify whether a remote computer is accessible over the network. The System.Net

Processing HTTP requests from within applications. The System.Net.HttpListener class can be used to create a simple web server that responds to HTTP requests. This web server remains active so long as the application is live and is available only on applications running on Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Windows Server 2003

Control of Caching can now be done programmatically using the System.Net.Cache namespace. Applications can control the caching of resources obtained using System.Net>WebRequest, System.Net.WebResponse and System.Net.WebClient classes. The .NET framework provides predefined cache policies or the user can specify a custom cache policy for each request.

Programming Languages: A number of changes have been brought into the programming languages used with the .NET framework such as Operator overloading , partial classes, generics, xml documentation, New data types and New keywords in VB.NET and generics, Iterators, anonymous methods and Partial classes in C# . We will study the changes brought into ASP.NET and C# in some detail later in this series.

In this section of the tutorial we have listed out and briefly defined some the major changes that have been wrought into the .NET Framework. The direction of the change was to ensure that developers are freed from writing codes for 70% of the functionality required for their application. The idea was to help them develop in the language that they are familiar with and at the same time provide them with interoperability features that make the language selected seamlessly integrate with other languages of the .NET framework. In the sections that follow we shall examine the impact of these changes on how developers work within the new .NET framework.

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