28.1 The .NET Framework

The .NET Framework is a new set of interfaces intended to replace the old Win32 and COM APIs. A couple of the major design goals for the .NET Framework were to make programming in a Windows environment much simpler and more consistent. The .NET Framework has two major components: the common language runtime (CLR) and the .NET Framework class library.

The CLR is the sandbox from which all .NET-based code, called managed code, is executed. The CLR is in charge of things such as memory management, security management, thread management, and other code management functions. One of the great benefits of the CLR is that different programming languages can develop code that runs in the CLR and can be used by other programming languages. That means you can develop managed Perl code that can be easily used by a C# application.

The other major component of the .NET Framework is the class library, which is a comprehensive set of object-oriented interfaces that replace the traditional Win32 API. The class library is divided up into namespaces. You can think of a namespace as a grouping of classes, properties, and methods that are targeted for a specific function. For example, the System.Text namespace contains classes for representing strings in ASCII, Unicode, and other character encoding systems. The namespace that is of the most interest to us is the System.DirectoryServices namespace, which contains all the classes necessary to query and manipulate a directory, such as Active Directory, using the .NET Framework.