Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5.

July 19, 2008

The .Net framework 3.5 (released November 19th 2007) is the latest framework to be released by Microsoft. It has a host of new features and will be shipped as standard with the latest version of Visual Studio .Net 2008 IDE.

.Net framework 3.5 is an incremental build which means that instead of creating a completely new framework Microsoft has instead added new assemblies and fixed known bugs. This decision helped make the transition between .Net framework 2.0 and 3.0 as painless as possible. In essence .Net framework 3.5 contains the 3.0 framework which contains the 2.0 framework.

New assemblies include:

  • System.Data.Linq.dll – The implementation for LINQ to SQL.
  • System.Xml.Linq.dll – The implementation for LINQ to XML.
  • System.AddIn.dll, System.AddIn.Contract.dll – New AddIn (plug-in) model.
  • System.Net.dll – Peer to Peer APIs.
  • System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement.dll – Wrapper for Active Directory APIs.
  • System.Management.Instrumentation.dll – WMI 2.0 managed provider (combined with
  • System.Management namespace in System.Core.dll).
  • System.WorkflowServices.dll and System.ServiceModel.Web.dll – WF and WCF enhancements (for more on WF + WCF in v3.5 follow links from here).
  • System.Web.Extensions.dll – The implementation for ASP.NET AJAX
  • System.Core.dll – In addition to the LINQ to Objects implementation, this assembly includes the following: HashSet, TimeZoneInfo, Pipes, ReaderWriteLockSlim, System.Security.,
  • System.Diagnostics.Eventing. and System.Diagnostics.PerformanceData.
  • System.Data.DataSetExtensions.dll – The implementation of LINQ to Dataset.
  • System.Windows.Presentation.dll –WPF support for the System.AddIn.
  • System.VisualC.STLCLR.dll – STL development in the managed world.

 

AJAX support has been added to .Net 3.5 as standard so that server and client-centric AJAX functionality can be added to existing and future web applications.

Some additional data-controls have also been added, in the shape of ‘ListView’ control for displaying data and the ‘LinqDataSource’ data control that exposes LINQ data to web applications. The ListView control is highly customisable (using templates and styles) and supports edit, update and delete operations as well as paging and sorting functionality.

Support from Vista styled Windows application has been added, which will even allow developers to update the appearance of old applications written using previous frameworks. Common file dialog boxes will be automatically updated to the Vista version. (See. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926167)

Some of the biggest language orientated changes to.Net 3.5 are the inclusion of XAML, C# 3.0 and LINQ. Link and XAML are covered within my Silverlight and Visual Studio.Net posts.

Summary
One of the most important things to realise is that current web and windows application can be easily upgraded to .Net 3.5 as it is essentially built on the back of the previous two frameworks. Developers can make the switch safe in the knowledge that it won’t break their existing applications (unless their application exploited a bug, in which case it will!).
These types of upgrades are extremely welcome as it lessen the learning curve and give .Net developers more faith in Microsoft frameworks core infrastructure.