.NET 3.0

.NET 3.0, formerly known as WinFX, is the latest version of Microsoft's .NET Framework, which represents both the company's business strategy and its collection of programming support for Web services. .NET 3.0 is due for a general release at the same time as Vista, Microsoft's upcoming update to its Windows operating system.

.NET 3.0 consists of four news tools. The Windows Communication Foundation lets developers build unified Web services and other distributed systems that can talk to each other. The Windows Presentation Foundation is a development tool for Web applications and rich client applications. The Windows Workflow Foundation is a programming model for building workflow-enabled applications in Windows. Finally, Windows CardSpace is an identity management component.

In addition to those four new tools, .NET 3.0 also includes several key existing pieces of .NET 2.0, such as ADO.NET 2.0, ASP.NET 2.0, Windows Forms 2.0 and the Common Language Runtime, or CLR 2.0. Microsoft's Expression suite, Windows File System and Visual Studio 2005 development suite are also compatible with .NET 3.0.

Learn more about .NET Framework 3.0 design and architecture tools

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More resources from around the web: - Microsoft has a WinFX Developer Center.

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