.NET Framework Versions

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:-

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 3^rd 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).