What's New in the .NET Framework 2.0 Beta

The .NET Framework version 2.0 Beta extends the .NET Framework version 1.1 with new features, improvements to existing features, and enhancements to the documentation. This section provides information about some key additions and modifications.

64-Bit Platform Support

The new generation of 64-bit computers enables the creation of applications that can run faster and take advantage of more memory than is available to 32-bit applications. New support for 64-bit applications enables users to build managed code libraries or easily use unmanaged code libraries on 64-bit computers.

Access Control List Support

An access control list (ACL) is used to grant or revoke permission to access a resource on a computer. New classes have been added to the .NET Framework that allow managed code to create and modify an ACL, and new members that utilize an ACL have been added to the I/O, registry, and threading classes.

ADO.NET

New features in ADO.NET include support for user-defined types (UDT); asynchronous database operations; XML data types; large value types; snapshot isolation; and new attributes that allow applications to support multiple active result sets (MARS) with SQL Server 2005. For more information about these and other new ADO.NET features, see What's New in ADO.NET .

ASP.NET

The Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Beta includes significant enhancements to all areas of ASP.NET. For Web page development, new controls make it easier to add commonly used functionality to dynamic Web pages. New data controls make it possible to display and edit data on an ASP.NET Web page without writing code. An improved code-behind model makes developing ASP.NET pages easier and more robust. Caching features include several new ways to cache pages, including the ability to build cache dependency on tables in a SQL Server database.

You can now customize Web sites and pages in a variety of ways. Profile properties enable ASP.NET to track property values for individual users automatically. Using Web Parts, you can create pages that users can customize themselves in the browser. You can automatically track page views and control clicks with site statistics, and you can add navigation menus using simple controls.

Improvements to Web site features allow you to create professional Web sites faster and more easily. Master pages allow you to create a consistent layout for all the pages in a site, and themes allow you to define a consistent look for controls and static text. To help protect your sites, you can precompile a Web site to produce executable code from source files (both code files and the markup in .aspx pages). You can then deploy the resulting output, which does not include any source information, to a production server. Enhancements to ASP.NET also include new tools and classes to make Web site management easier for Web site developers, server administrators, and hosters.

ASP.NET accommodates a wide variety of browsers and devices. By default, controls render output that is compatible with XHTML 1.1 standards. The new adaptive rendering architecture enables controls to automatically render the correct markup for a specific browser or device; you no longer need to use separate classes for mobile development. You can use device filtering to specify different property values on the same control for different browsers, and ASP.NET includes special controls specifically designed for creating pages that run on small-form browsers and mobile phones.

For a more complete list of new features in ASP.NET, see What's New in ASP.NET .

Authenticated Streams

Applications can use the new NegotiateStream and SslStream classes for authentication and to help secure information transmitted between a client and a server. These authenticated stream classes support mutual authentication, data encryption, and data signing. The NegotiateStream class uses the Negotiate security protocol for authentication. The SslStream class uses the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) security protocol for authentication.

COM Interop Services Enhancements

Four major enhancements have been made to the classes and tools that support interoperability with COM:

• The operating system maintains a limited number of handles, which are used to reference critical operating system resources. The new SafeHandle and CriticalHandle classes, and their specialized derived classes, provide safe and reliable means of manipulating operating system handles.
• Marshaling improvements make interoperating with native code easier. Two enhancements to the interop marshaler satisfy the two most common user requests: the ability to wrap native function pointers into delegates, and the ability to marshal fixed-size arrays of structures inside structures.
• The performance of calls between applications in different application domains has been made much faster for common call types.
• New switches on the Type Library Importer (Tlbimp.exe) and Type Library Exporter (Tlbexp.exe) tools eliminate dependency on the registry to resolve type library references. This enhancement is important for creating robust build environments.

Console Class Additions

New members of the Console class enable applications to manipulate the dimensions of the console window and screen buffer; to move a rectangular area of the screen buffer, which is useful for performing smooth, simple animation; and to wait while reading console input until a key is pressed. Other new class members control the foreground and background colors of text, the visibility and size of the cursor, and the frequency and duration of the console beep.

Data Protection API

The new Data Protection API (DPAPI) includes four methods that allow applications to encrypt passwords, keys, connections strings, and so on, without calling platform invoke. You can also encrypt blocks of memory on computers running Windows Server 2003 or later operating systems.