What’s New in the .NET Framework 4 Beta 1- Highlights

Published: May, 2009

One of the things that I enjoy about my job is the chance that I get to talk to different people about their development platform and the things that make creating and using software easier for them. After the Microsoft Professional Developer’s Conference (PDC) in October 2008, I have had the chance to talk about the different parts of the upcoming release of the .NET Framework. I have included a high level overview of the features that come up most often in conversation where people have told me they expect to be able to save time and effort with the changes in .NET Framework 4. Recently Microsoft has focused on 3 benefits of the framework in three categories: Deep Investments in the Core Framework, Superior Developer Productivity, and Extend the .NET Continuum. I will also group the features into these three areas.

For more details and examples of each of these features please see the documentation included with the beta 1 download.

Deep Investments in the Core Framework

In 2002 Microsoft released the .NET Framework 1.0 with the idea that common functionality should be included in the base class library (BCL) to allow developers to focus on solving business problems and not creating the infrastructure code needed to solve them. This release adds new classes to the BCL to continue solving common problems. Since 2002 there have also been many changes in the standard computer and the expectations of developers and end users. Computers today come with more memory, larger hard drives, and better graphics cards than the typical computer had in 2002. In addition to computers getting faster processors, most new computers today have a 64 bit processor with multiple cores in a single CPU. The .NET Framework has continued to evolve to take advantage of the changes in hardware.

.NET Framework 4 includes the Task Parallel Library (TPL) and Parallel Language Integrated Query (PLINQ) to enable developers to easily write applications that can execute in parallel across the multiple processors and cores in modern computers. The classes included in the framework relieve the developer from having to learn about and consider concurrency controls like lock, semaphore, and mutex to avoid common problems with parallel processing. Additional features have been added to Visual Studio to make debugging parallel applications easier.

Microsoft has also added the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) that will allow applications to be dynamically composed. The extensibility provided by MEF allows easier creation of add-ins and extensions. Applications can use the framework to dynamically add in new functionality at runtime. Much like the ability to download and install plug-ins in a browser to support additional functionality, applications can be customized and evolve even after the initial release.

As the .NET Framework has evolved since its initial release most of the changes have been additive allowing programs created using older versions of the framework to run on the newer version of the framework. Microsoft has been very good at documenting changes to the framework and providing descriptive error messages when a breaking change occurs. With .NET 4 Microsoft has added the ability to have both version 3.5 SP1 and 4 loaded into the same process. Applications loading add-ins or using MEF to provide extensibility points can now load add-ins that rely on version 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, or 4 of the framework.

In version 3.5 of the framework Microsoft started integrating workflow into Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). In this version the integration becomes deeper. In the .NET framework 4, services can be declared in the same eXtensible Application Markup Language (XAML) language that Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) uses. This will allow developers to reuse their skills and create simple workflow services in a single language.

One of the key features of the .NET Framework from the beginning has been the ability to support multiple languages. This allows users to be productive in whichever language they feel most comfortable with. In the .NET Framework 4 the C# and VB.NET languages each get improvements to support features that have been available in the framework itself but not supported in the language. The new features in C# include optional parameters and named parameters so library writers can write fewer overloaded methods and to ease COM interoperability from C#. VB.NET is improved to remove the need for underscore characters as a line continuation character, auto implemented properties, and multi-line lambda expressions. Overall the changes will make the choice of language more a personal preference than a comparison of language features.

The other new language feature that seems to have a large mind share among developers is the support in the framework for the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR). The DLR provides a foundation for dynamic languages to compile to the same intermediate language as other .NET languages. Along with the DLR Microsoft is releasing three dynamic languages F#, IronRuby, and IronPython.

Superior Developer Productivity

ASP.NET is the technology for creating web pages and applications on the .NET development platform. Web applications have seen a lot of innovation and continue to be used by organizations to provide applications quickly with a low deployment cost. In addition web applications are becoming more interactive with rich media, social interaction, and fast response from the web server becoming the expected norm. Microsoft has continued to innovate in web applications and has produced several out of band releases to help developers create ASP.NET applications using new application styles like AJAX and MVC that have been included in the core ASP.NET product in Beta 1.

Microsoft is including improvements to the AJAX framework in beta 1. There are new controls and a set of ASP.NET AJAX client templates included in the Beta 1 release. The AJAX control toolkit is enhanced with new controls that have been available in on CodePlex but are now included in the core product. On the client side there are also new controls, improved DOM selection, and animation features. These improvements will make creating interactive web pages easier.

The ASP.NET MVC framework, a framework for creating web applications that use a model-view-controller pattern, is also included in the beta 1 release. The MVC framework allows complete control over the generated HTML. The MVC framework also separates the handling of request from the creation of HTML. This separation of concerns allows for easier automated testing of web sites to ensure that web sites are functionally correct. Also of note is the open source jQuery JavaScript library which has been included with ASP.NET to provide additional JavaScript support. Having a supported JavaScript library included with the framework reduces the need for developers to write and debug their own JavaScript libraries.

The ASP.NET Dynamic Data allows developers to create data driven web applications with a minimal amount of code. The Dynamic Data framework allow developers to create web pages based off of a LINQ query or ADO.NET Data Services model and provides basic UI to manipulate the data. Pages created with ASP.NET Dynamic Data can be integrated into existing ASP.NET web sites.

WCF is also being enhanced in its support for Representational State Transfer (REST) based services. Some of the work done with the REST starter kit for WCF on CodePlex is being included with this release to allow developers to create services that will take advantage of the simple interface and cacheability of REST services. With built in support for JSON, ATOM, and POX from RESTful services, organizations have more options on how to interoperate between different applications, services, and platforms.

Extend the .NET Continuum

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) provides a very powerful unified communications infrastructure for developers to be able to write applications that can communicate over different transports and protocols. .NET 4 adds additional functionality to make that task easier for developers. There are additional standard bindings that support the common use cases. In addition WCF now supports default bindings so a service that does not specify a binding will automatically use the default binding specified at the application or machine level.

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) introduces a new programming model in .NET 4 that is declarative (XAML-based) by default, easier to host, performance has been increased through an enhanced persistence store and use of ETW for tracing, and a more explicit activity object model that makes it easier to create activities. Additionally, the new WPF-based designer for creating and debugging workflows will help developers and end users better communicate about a workflow’s requirements to solve business problems.

Another change with WF that has garnered the attention of the WF experts that I know is the change away from using the state machine workflows to a FlowChart style workflow. The majority of existing state machine workflows can be migrated to the FlowChart workflow and the pick activity. The FlowChart workflow also provides familiar idioms for creating workflows.

All of the changes in WCF and WF allow developers to create services that will easily scale up to handle high transaction workloads, provides better logging and tracing of processes, and reduce the amount of time spent writing “plumbing code”. Having a streamlined set of skills needed to accomplish these tasks will allow a wider range of developers to work with middle tier applications.

The middle tier is not the only place where Microsoft is ensuring that developers can reuse their existing skills to create new and exciting applications. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is also getting new features to support advances in hardware and current use cases.

As more line of business applications use WPF, Microsoft has included improvements to help more easily create those LOB applications. The major improvements include a data grid control to improve the experience when building data centric applications. There are also advances in text layout and localization support for applications that need to display data in multiple languages.

.NET 4 has support for multi-touch devices. New touch screens and the Microsoft Surface have started developers thinking about how people can collaborate and use tactile interaction with the computer. By making it easier for developers to add support for these new features to their applications, new and innovative applications will begin to appear in the marketplace.

Microsoft has long produced tools to help developers to use their languages and frameworks effectively. With the release of .NET 4 a new version of Visual Studio named Visual Studio 2010 will also be released. Visual Studio 2010 will be written in WPF and support all of the framework and language features discussed in this article. Microsoft is also using MEF in developing Visual Studio 2010 to provide easier integration with add-ins. This should allow other developers to provide functionality that Microsoft has not added in the core product. By opening up the add-in market to a larger number of developers we should see better integration with popular open source and commercial development tools.

Visual Studio 2010 will also include additional project templates. Beyond the ones already discussed is the inclusion of development templates for SharePoint. Many organizations have standardized on SharePoint as their collaboration environment. While SharePoint provides a lot of functionality, unique business requirements sometimes require customization to the server.

Conclusion

This paper has barely scratched the surface of all the new features in beta 1 of the .NET Framework 4. There are many more features and improvements than can be mentioned in a single article. For more detailed information on these features or to find out about other features in beta 1, please see the product documentation and the discussion forums.

About the Author

Scott Golightly is an Enterprise Solution Strategist with Advaiya, Inc. (http://www.advaiya.com) where he helps his clients to make wise use of their software platform. Scott is also a Regional Director (http://www.theregion.com) and enjoys learning about and teaching others about Microsoft development tools. When Scott is not working at his computer he enjoys spending time with his family and being in the outdoors. If you have questions about this article please contact Scott at Scott.Golightly@advaiya.com.