 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group For the Bookshelf Major Keary |
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.NET
It is now some eighteen months since Microsoft announced .NET, a platform presenting "a new development
framework with a new programming interface to Windows services and APIs, integrating a number of technologies
that emerged from Microsoft during the late 1990s" [.NET Framework Essentials]. A lot of words have been
printed on dot net and its development tools, but much of the literature is based on beta
software.
Until recently there was nothing that distilled the .NET Framework to its essentials for developers.
O'Reilly's .NET Framework Essentials is an introduction (in the academic sense) for developers. It
describes the dot net architecture; looks at the main dot net programming languages; explains
the Common Language Runtime (CLR), Common Language Specification (CLS), Microsoft's
Intermediate Language (IL); and ADO.NET and its relationship with XML. Appendices contain useful
tabulated information and a valuable glossary of the plethora of acronyms and abbreviations that are part of
the dot net baggage.
Even though there are plenty of code examples, this is not a tutorial for novices. It is a concise
introduction and reference for developers who have been working with established programming languages. For
them it is an essential resource presented in the style one expects of O'Reilly texts: excellence in
typographic design, quality control, content, and organisation of information.
| Thuan Thai and Hoang Lam: .NET Framework Essentials ISBN 0-596-00165-7 Published by O'Reilly, 304 pp., RRP $89.95 incl. GST |
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Reprinted from the February 2002 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
