Microsoft started development on
the .NET Framework in the late 1990s originally under the name of Next
Generation Windows Services (NGWS). By late 2000 the first beta versions of
.NET 1.0 were released.
Complete listing of the releases of the .NET Framework is:-
Version
|
Version No.
|
Release
Date
|
Visual
Studio
|
Default in
Windows
|
1.0
|
1.0.3705.0
|
13-02-2002
|
Visual Studio .NET
|
|
1.1
|
1.1.4322.573
|
24-04-2003
|
Visual Studio .NET 2003
|
Windows Server 2003
|
2.0
|
2.0.50727.42
|
07-11-2005
|
Visual Studio 2005
|
Windows Server 2003 R2
|
3.0
|
3.0.4506.30
|
06-11-2006
|
Visual Studio 2008
|
Windows Vista,
Windows Server 2008
|
3.5
|
3.5.21022.8
|
19-11-2007
|
Visual Studio 2008
|
Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2
|
4.0
|
4.0.30319.1
|
12-04-2010
|
Visual Studio 2010
|
|
Table
.NET Version
.NET Framework 1.0
This is
the first release of the .NET framework, released on 13 February 2002 and
available for Windows 98, Me, NT 4.0, 2000, and XP. Mainstream support by Microsoft for this version ended 10 July
2007, and extended support ended 14 July 2009.
.NET
Framework 1.1
This is the first major .NET
Framework upgrade. It is available on its own as a redistributable package or
in a software development kit, and was published on 3rd April 2003.
It is also part of the second release of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET (released
as Visual Studio .NET 2003)
Changes in 1.1 in comparison with 1.0
- Built-in support for
mobile ASP.NET controls. Previously available as an add-on for .NET
Framework, now part of the framework.
- Security changes – enable Windows Forms
assemblies to execute in a semi-trusted manner from the Internet, and
enable Code Access Security in ASP.NET applications.
- Built-in support for ODBC and Oracle databases.
Previously available as an add-on for .NET Framework 1.0, now part of the
framework.
- .NET Compact Framework – a version of the .NET
Framework for small devices.
- Internet Protocol version 6
(IPv6) support.
.NET
Framework 2.0
Released with Visual Studio
2005, Microsoft SQL Server 2005, and BizTalk 2006 and was
published on 22 January 2006.
Changes in 2.0 in comparison with 1.1
- Generics
- Language support for generics built directly into
the .NET CLR.
- Full 64-bit support for both the x64 and the IA64
hardware platforms.
- Numerous API changes.
- SQL Server integration – .NET 2.0, VS 2005, and
SQL Server 2005 are all tied together. This means that instead of using
T-SQL, one can build stored procedures and triggers in any of the
.NET-compatible languages.
- A new hosting API for native applications.
- Many
additional and improved ASP.NET Web controls.
- New data controls with declarative data
binding.
- New personalization features for ASP.NET, such as
support for themes, skins, master pages and web parts.
- .NET Micro Framework – a version of the .NET
Framework related to the Smart Personal Objects Technology
initiative.
- Membership provider
- Partial classes, Nullable types, Anonymous
methods, Iterators, Data tables.
.NET
Framework 3.0
.NET Framework 3.0, formerly called
WinFX, was released on 21 November 2006. It includes a new set of managed code
APIs.
.NET Framework 3.0 consists of four major new
components:
- Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), formerly
code-named Avalon; a new user interface subsystem and API based on XML and
vector graphics, which uses 3D computer graphics hardware and Direct3D
technologies. See WPF SDK for developer articles and documentation on
WPF.
- Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), formerly
code-named Indigo; a service-oriented messaging system which allows
programs to interoperate locally or remotely similar to web
services.
- Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) allows for
building of task automation and integrated transactions using
workflows.
- Windows CardSpace, formerly code-named InfoCard;
a software component which securely stores a person's digital identities
and provides a unified interface for choosing the identity for a
particular transaction, such as logging in to a website.
.NET
Framework 3.5
Version 3.5 of the .NET Framework
was released on 19 November 2007, but it is not included with Windows
Server 2008. As with .NET Framework 3.0, version 3.5 uses the CLR of version
2.0, which adds some methods and properties to the BCL classes in version 2.0
which are required for version 3.5 features such as Language Integrated
Query (LINQ).
Changes
since version 3.0
- New language features in C# 3.0
and VB.NET 9.0 compiler
- Adds support for expression trees and lambda
methods
- Expression trees to represent high-level
source code at runtime.
- Anonymous types with static type inference
- Language Integrated Query (LINQ) along with
its various providers
- LINQ to Objects, XML, SQL
- Paging support for ADO.NET
- ADO.NET synchronization API to synchronize local
caches and server side data stores
- Managed wrappers for Windows Management
Instrumentation and Active Directory API's
- Enhanced WCF and WF runtimes,
which let WCF work with POX and JSON data, and also
expose WF workflows as WCF services.
- ASP.NET
AJAX is included.
.NET
Framework 4.0
On 12 April 2010, the final
version of .NET Framework 4.0 was launched alongside the final
release of Visual Studio 2010.
Key focuses for this release are:
- Parallel Extensions to improve support
for parallel computing, which target multi-core or distributed systems.
To this end, they included technologies like PLINQ (Parallel LINQ), a
parallel implementation of the LINQ engine, and Task Parallel
Library, which exposes parallel constructs via method calls.
- New Visual Basic .NET and C# language
features, such as statement lambdas, implicit line
continuations, dynamic dispatch, named parameters,
and optional parameters.
- Inclusion of new types
to work with arbitrary-precision arithmetic (System.Numerics.BigInteger)
and complex numbers (System.Numerics.Complex).