Chapter One
What Is Microsoft .NET?

New technologies force change, nowhere more so than in computers and software. Occasionally, a new technology is so innovative that it forces us to challenge our most fundamental assumptions. In the computing industry, the latest such technology is the Internet. It has forced us to rethink how software should be created, deployed, and used.
However, that process takes time. Usually, when a powerful new technology comes along, it is first simply strapped onto existing platforms. So it has been for the Internet. Before the advent of Microsoft .NET, developers used older platforms with new Internet capabilities "strapped on." The resulting systems worked, but they were expensive and difficult to produce, hard to use, and difficult to maintain.
Realizing this several years ago, Microsoft decided it was time to design a new platform from the ground up specifically for the post Internet world. The result is called .NET. It represe ... read full excerpt from Professional VB 2005 ebook