CHAPTER 1 THE PHILOSOPHY OF .NET
.NET Namespace
Meaning in Life
System.Reflection
System.Reflection.Emit
These namespaces define types that support runtime type
discovery as well as dynamic creation of types.
System.Runtime.InteropServices
This namespace provides facilities to allow .NET types to interact
with unmanaged code (e.g., C-based DLLs and COM servers) and
vice versa.
System.Drawing
System.Windows.Forms
These namespaces define types used to build desktop applications
using .NET’s original UI toolkit (Windows Forms).
System.Windows
System.Windows.Controls
System.Windows.Shapes
The System.Windows namespace is the root for several namespaces
that represent the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) UI
toolkit.
System.Linq
System.Xml.Linq
System.Data.DataSetExtensions
These namespaces define types used when programming against
the LINQ API.
System.Web
This is one of many namespaces that allow you to build ASP.NET
web applications.
System.ServiceModel
This is one of many namespaces used to build distributed
applications using the Windows Communication Foundation API.
System.Workflow.Runtime
System.Workflow.Activities
These are two of many namespaces that define types used to build
“workflow-enabled” applications using the Windows Workflow
Foundation API.
System.Threading
System.Threading.Tasks
This namespace defines numerous types to build multithreaded
applications that can distribute workloads across multiple CPUs.
System.Security
Security is an integrated aspect of the .NET universe. In the
security-centric namespaces, you find numerous types dealing
with permissions, cryptography, and so on.
System.Xml
The XML-centric namespaces contain numerous types used to
interact with XML data.
The Role of the Microsoft Root Namespace
I’m sure you noticed while reading over the listings in Table 1-3, that System is the root namespace for a
majority of nested namespaces (e.g., System.IO, System.Data). As it turns out, however, the .NET base
class library defines a number of topmost root namespaces beyond System, the most useful of which is
named Microsoft.
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