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VS.Net Launched April
2002
Microsoft throws everything behind .NET
Microsoft stepped up its determination to be the major
player on the Internet with the launch of VS.Net, an important building
block in its suite of programming tools.
The .NET strategy uses features from XML that have transformed
the web from being a medium that uses a simple descriptive markup language
(HTML) to one that has been designed to structure information, enabling
it to be passed more easily from one application to the next. Consequences
of this include the ability to transfer information from databases to
online forms and pages, for example, or a spreadsheet that can use real-time
information to update its cells for stock quotes.
.NET has been designed to implement these changes on
a more practical level, and represents a major shift in Microsoft's approach
to programming (for a company that began programming Basic when operating
systems were not even a glint in the eye of Bill Gates). Bill Gates has
described VS.NET as 'the key to the next big wave of developer opportunity,
creating the XML Web services that will soon become the basis for all
major new software development.'
With its memory full of the events of the recent DOJ
anti-monopoly investigation, Microsoft has been marketing .NET as based
on open standards, pitching the applicaiton as an environment familiar
to traditional programmers who need to take advantage of new, networked
markets. Its main competitors are such things as IBM's Websphere and Java:
indeed, the new language C# (based on C++ and elements of Java) is frequently
touted as a Java killer.
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.NET, of course, still has to prove itself, but
VS.Net has the advantage of familiarity for a large number of programmers
who have been working with Visual Basic and C++ for years. Microsoft
may not be able to corner the Internet in the same way that it has
the desktop PC, but it is confident that it will be able to build
up a great deal of support for its products by establishing them
as the main tools with which ecommerce is built.
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Microsoft v AOL
Microsoft in the .NET
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Microsoft VS.Net
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