The Power of the Platform

xRM exploits a variety of familiar Microsoft application platform building blocks, including the .NET framework— one of the most widely implemented, dependable and powerful platforms in the industry. As a service-oriented framework with flexible architecture, it is designed to meet all of your businesses' integration requirements. .NET not only supports the interoperability of widespread applications, but provides a unified, secure and comprehensive interface for the management of your business. Below, is a more in-depth look at some of the .NET features.

Common Runtime Engine: The Common Language Runtime (CLR) is the virtual machine component of the .NET framework. All .NET programs execute under the supervision of the CLR, guaranteeing certain properties and behaviors in the areas of memory management, security, and exception handling.

Language Independence: The .NET Framework introduces a Common Type System, or CTS. The CTS specification defines all possible data types and programming constructs supported by the CLR and how they may or may not interact with each other. Because of this feature, the .NET Framework supports the exchange of instances of types between programs written in any of the .NET languages.

Base Class Library: The Base Class Library (BCL), part of the Framework Class Library (FCL), is a library of functionality available to all languages using the .NET Framework. The BCL provides classes which encapsulate a number of common functions, including file reading and writing, graphic rendering, database interaction and XML document manipulation.

Simplified Deployment: The .NET framework includes design features and tools that help manage the installation of computer software to ensure that it does not interfere with previously installed software, and that it conforms to security requirements.

Security: The design is meant to address some of the vulnerabilities, such as buffer overflows, that have been exploited by malicious software. Additionally, .NET provides a common security model for all applications.

Portability: The design of the .NET Framework allows it to theoretically be platform agnostic, and thus cross-platform compatible. That is, a program written to use the framework should run without change on any type of system for which the framework is implemented. Microsoft's commercial implementations of the framework cover Windows, Windows CE, and the Xbox 360. In addition, Microsoft submits the specifications for the Common Language Infrastructure (which includes the core class libraries, Common Type System, and the Common Intermediate Language), the C# language, and the C++/CLI language to both ECMA and the ISO, making them available as open standards. This makes it possible for third parties to create compatible implementations of the framework and its languages on other platforms.