Im sorry to ask such a simple question, but can somebody explain microsoft's .net and why it is so revolutionary. How would one give support for such a product. A customer asked me and I had heard of it but do not know that much.

Thanks
Bobby

Originally posted by dialuphost
can somebody explain microsoft's .net

http://www.microsoft.com/net/defined/default.asp

As far as I know it is only supported on Windows servers

No I understand that. I want to know who this wold benefit and how?

Mainly ASP developers. I don't know all the technical stuff but from what I understand it provides them with a lot more options.

It's not even close to revolutionary. It' just another M$ product made to take over the web.

Originally posted by Shyne
It's not even close to revolutionary. It' just another M$ product made to take over the web.

That's an understatement. Please make sure you know the facts before posting a conclusion.

To put it simply, .Net is just like rewriting the whole Windows API, and add in many other "modern" APIs. You can also compare .Net to java.

Peter

I can sum it up for you:

.NET = Microsofts latest monopolistic(sp?) scheme

Yep, MONOPOLY.

The only support I would give for microsoft.net is the recycling bin. :D

Originally posted by OKIHost
I can sum it up for you:

.NET = Microsofts latest monopolistic(sp?) scheme

I am a bit tired reading all the useless posts bashing microsoft. Yes, microsoft is a controvesal subject, but they do have certain strengths, that's why they are around.

If you read the initial post, the poster is trying to understand what .net is and what is so significant about it. I don't see how your post (or any other purely microsoft-bashing posts) help him in any way at all.

Do you know .net? do you do platform-level development? Do you know web services? .Net is serious business, whether monopolistic or not.

Rather than bashing, maybe a bit of learning would help.

I apologize if this sounds harsh, but I am sure you understand how I feel.

Peter

.NET is Microsoft offer on Web Services. It will be MS challenge, against Java based Web Services, offered by the "Open Sources".

If MS will protagonize against the other giants (going for Java; IBM, Bea, Sun, Borland, Oracle, etc.), I believe they will have a place, but doubt that MS will have a good stronghold of more than 20% of that market.

I believe a big handicap that MS has, is their Web Server NT or W2000 based, that hasn't shown good reliability figures, in my opinion.

Protagonize, sorry about that (I think) invented Spanglish word. I mean "carrying out with superiority", anyway.

Originally posted by Shyne
It's not even close to revolutionary. It' just another M$ product made to take over the web.

Oh yea, you are right there. BULLS EYE!

-Kyle :)

In brief, .NET is an open standard that allows you to write a program in almost any language, compile it once, and then run it on almost any platform. This is a *good* thing. There has been a lot of confusion and misinformation about .NET, saying .NET is c#, or .NET is leased software, or .NET is centralized private information (i.e. passport). it is none of these things.

Microsoft obviously is supporting .NET on windows, but they are also supporting it on MacOS, and a group called "mono" is implementing it on Linux (http://www.go-mono.com/). It is an open standard, so you could go ahead and implement it for whatever system you want. It has the advantage over Java that you can use nearly any language you want (C++, Java, C#, Eiffel, etc..). Even more interestingly, you could create classes in one language and then inherit from them in another language. This introduces the possibility of really useful language-independent class libraries.

I think anyone who simply dismisses it as bad simply because it comes from Microsoft needs to at least look into the details of what it is before making their opinion.

Matt

Originally posted by Gadgy
Yep, MONOPOLY.

The only support I would give for microsoft.net is the recycling bin. :D

... Agree 100%.

Okay you can possibly argue overall Microsoft is a monopoly. But that is not what we are discussing here. We are discussing .NET. Not Microsoft as a company. Whether you think .NET is a monopoly or not that is your business but quite frankly people are buying it. Please keep all this "monopoly" crap to another thread. That is not what is being discussed here. The original post was "can somebody explain Microsoft's .NET" not "Is Microsoft's .NET a monopoly".

This may give you a better idea of what .net is about.

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/05/10/020510hnsoapdebate.xml?0515weli

As was mentioned before, .NET is currently an open standard that can be implemented on any operating system. In addition to mono, there is also something called dotGNU. No matter what everyone who hates microsoft says, .NET is in fact very innovative and powerful. Also, the reliability of windows servers although not as good as UNIX or LINUX is still very good (if you know what you are doing).
Also, .NET as proposed by microsoft is not merely a devlopment environment but a whole initiative parts of which include web services etc... The fact that you can write .NET application in many many languages sets it apart from java. C# being the flagship language for dotnet implemets many java like features and also implements many more features.
Overall, no one should dismiss dotnet because it is very powerful and will surely have quite a bit of influence on how software will be written in the future.
Most web customers will probably use one of the functionalities of dotnet and the is asp.net. asp.net is amazing as far as I have seen. For you to implement asp.net on windows servers is very easy (mainly one download and install) however, you have to make sure that you have the correct security settings. There is much documentation and online presentations that explain the many features that you can implement and show you some best practices. I suggest reading the documentation and viewing some of the presentations before installing the package from microsoft.
hope this helps