Introduction to .NET Framework 3.0/Preface

This book has been written in order to educate programmers (especially .NET programmers) about the latest trends in Microsoft's .NET Framework. Microsoft .NET 3.0 is a major milestone in the evolution of the .NET framework and this book is equally indispensable as a study material in understanding .NET 3.0.

This book is made up of four units. The first unit comprises a general introduction about the .NET framework and enhancements introduced by .NET2.0 as masterpages. The reason for including a brief introduction of masterpages is that the concept of masterpages shall be in extensive use in .NET Framework 3.0 applications and a coverage of masterpages as an overview seemed a necessity. The second unit comprises a brief overview of the new enhancements brought forth in .NET 3.0 with regard to the use of generic and nullable data types. Unit 3 includes a detailed coverage of the four major components newly introduced in .NET 3.0: Windows Communication Foundation(WCF), Windows Presentation Foundation(WPF), Windows Workflow Foundation(WWF) and Windows Cardspace.It is here that the .NET course actually commences. The fourth and final unit comprises an overview of IIS 7.0 and Windows Powershell, which is the new command-line interface(CLI) introduced by .NET 3.0.

-Ravichandar Krishnamurthy, Author, August 9, 2007.