To address the limitations of COM and DNA, Microsoft designed the .NET platform for Internet-based applications. .NET manages the scripting limitations of COM and DCOM and makes component development an easy task. .NET provides the core technologies for developing Web services. Therefore, it not only benefits individual users but also organizations and developers.

 

Two major benefits of .NET include side-by-side execution of code and decentralized registration of components.

 

Benefits of .NET: Side-by-Side Code Execution

.NET supports side-by-side execution of the code that helps resolve versioning problems. This feature solves the problem of overwriting of a shared component by allowing multiple versions of a component to be installed and run simultaneously on the same computer. Therefore, .NET developers are not required to maintain backward compatibility because different applications can use different versions of a shared component.

 

.NET developers can also specify the version and dependencies between different software components. The dependencies are stored with the components in an assembly and this information helps maintain application integrity. Each application can request to use a specific version of the component. At runtime, the stored information is used to load the correct version of the dependency. .NET generates errors if components are not loaded, missing dependencies are found, or tampered files are detected.

 

Benefits of .NET: Decentralized Registration of Components

.NET also reduces problems that occur because of centralized registration of components in the Registry. It does not use the Registry for component registration. Instead, it stores information about the components with the code and retrieves this information directly from the files at runtime.

 

When an application instantiates a new component, the application directory and other predefined locations for the component are scanned. When the component is located, information about the component is cached for future use. This decentralized registration of components minimizes the chances of applications interfering with each other. You also do not need to register and unregister components. Therefore, deployment of applications becomes easy and can be done by simply copying files into a directory.

 

Benefits of .NET to Individual Users

.NET provides an integrated, mobile computing experience to individual users. Data can be integrated from a range of computing hardware, such as laptops, Pocket PCs, Smartphones, and other devices.  This enables users to access information easily regardless of their location.

 

In addition, .NET applications can be installed using XCOPY. Users can easily install desktop applications on the client computers by simply copying the files on their computers from a remote Web server or from a disk. Further, .NET applications are not dependent on the Registry. Therefore, it is easy to remove or replicate them. To remove or replicate the applications, users simply need to delete the files or copy over them.

 

Benefits of .NET to Developers

.NET provides developers with an integrated set of tools for building Web services quickly and cost-effectively. Developers can use these tools to create scalable solutions that can work across different computing devices.