I have done an official Technical Review of a packtpub title “Building Microservices with .NET Core”

https://www.packtpub.com/web-development/building-microservices-net-core

This book has total 10 chapters and available for purchase in all leading bookstores and online. You can also purchase this directly through the packtpub link provided above.

Abstract

Many times, developers need to know if a technology or feature is supported by a specific .NET version. For example, how to verify that .NET Core has Linux support or not. Well, you can always Bing that but wouldn’t it be better if this need is supported by “one stop search” and results are authentic.

Accessing .NET API Browser

.NET API Browser can be accessed by https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/

.NET API Browser allows you to search a wide range of features across following:

  • .NET Framework
  • .NET Standard
  • .NET Core
  • Xamarin
  • Azure

Let’s Search in .NET Framework

Open the API Browser and filter it to .NET Framework and choose a version from the middle dropdown. .NET Framework allows to search only for .NET 4.5 – 4.7 I.e. you can’t search features prior to .NET 4.5 in the .NET API Browser.

With the release of .NET 4.6 a new overload was introduced for System.GC.Collect(). When Searched in .NET 4.5 you will see as shown below:

But when switched the Framework Version to 4.6; then new overload can be observed as shown in the image below.

Let’s Search in .NET Standard

.NET Standard is a “specification” of .NET API which are available across all the .NET Runtimes. .NET Standards provides and supports uniformity within entire .NET ecosystem. You can refer to the list of .NET Standard libraries here https://www.nuget.org/packages/NETStandard.Library

As name explains by it-self;  this become evident that all core APIs like System, System.Collections, System.Diagnostics and System.IO etc. are natural candidates for .NET Standard as shown in the image below

Let’s Search in .NET Core

.NET Core is brand new and well accepted framework in Microsoft and non-Microsoft world. To Learn more about .NET read my blog post or C-Sharpcorner Article or watch my Channel9 Video.

A well-known fact about .NET Core is that .NET Core has support for Linux as shown in the image below.

Summary

.NET API Browser is a great feature and can become very handy to identify supported features by various platforms as shown some related to .NET in the article above. You may want to use .NET API Browser to search and learn about other APIs related to Xamarin and Azure as well, remember it’s one stop .NET API Browser.

https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/NET-Core/What-is-NET-Core

Please Rate and comment the Video on Channel9

.NET Core-Fork in the Road

June 21st, 2016 | Posted by Vidya Vrat in .NET Core - (0 Comments)

What is .NET Core

.NET Core is a new Microsoft platform. Which is modular, cross-platform, open source and have better support for cloud. .NET Core will continue to run on Windows devices, as well as on Linux and Mac OS X. In addition, unlike the .NET 4.6 which is installed machine wide as single large block, Windows-only runtime environment, .NET Core can be used to create modular libraries and applications that can target multiple platforms and deployed (per-application) along with the application itself.

Why .NET “Core”

Microsoft’s vision of .NET platform evolved over the past 15 years and many technology enthusiasts, leaders and influencers wanted .NET to be open-source, available to other platforms like Linux and Mac in addition to currently and widely supported Microsoft Windows.

To accomplish this broad and such a large goal and vision it was necessary to have a “fork in the road” and create a fresh and new version of “.NET” which is named as “.NET Core 1.0”.

Hence, Developing application using “.NET Core 1.0” will enable and empower the developers to write applications with one platform for instance Microsoft Windows and when all ready that can run on multiple platforms in this case Mac, Linux and Windows of-course.

Why Version “1.0”

Current and latest .NET Framework version is 4.6.x and so next major release version was supposed be “5” and initially it was called .NET Core 5. Similarly next version of ASP .NET 4.5 was named ASP .NET 5 and next version of Entity Framework 6.1.x was named Entity Framework 7, fair enough.

 

But this numbering order conveyed the message that these are just next version of the same framework and technology; whereas the reality is different. “.NET Core” concept is totally new, YES! Its brand new concept hence numbering has to be re-started and so…

  • .NET Framework 5.0 is now known as “.NET Core 1.0”
  • ASP .NET 5.0 is now knows as “ASP .NET Core 1.0”
  • MVC 6 is now known as “ASP .NET Core MVC”
  • Entity Framework 7 is now known as “Entity Framework Core 1.0”

.NET Ecosystem

With new launch of .NET “Core” wave of framework and technology, old version .NET 4.6 (which are mature and fully grown) will continue to co-exist. .NET Core can be installed on the same machine. However, .NET Core will have its very own personalized core libraries etc.

.NET Core Includes CoreCLR, a more lightweight runtime that provides basic services to your application including automatic memory management and garbage collection, along with a basic type library. Unlike .NET 4.6 which has such a large footprint for the same.

.NET Core also includes CoreFx, a set of modular assemblies that you can add to your project/application as per demand. Unlike the .NET Framework 4.x, which always had to make the entire .NET Framework Class Library aka BCL (base class library) available, with .NET Core you can select only the assemblies that you need. I.e. Windows doesn’t need Web and vice-versa.

.NET Core implementations

Following technologies are currently available in .NET Core wave.

  • ASP.NET Core. ASP.NET Core is a modular version of ASP.NET that combines ASP.NET MVC and the ASP.NET Web API. It runs on both the .NET Framework 4.6 and .NET Core 1.0. It is custom designed for building high-performance cloud applications. ASP .NET Core should not be considered and taken as a replacement to ASP.NET 4.6 in the .NET Framework 4.6.
  • .NET Native. .NET Native is a compilation and deployment technology for Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps written in C# and Visual Basic .NET. “.NET Native” compiles apps to native code, and statically links into an application’s assemblies only those code elements from .NET Core libraries and other third-party libraries that are actually used.
  • Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps. The Universal Windows Platform allows you to build a single app that can run on the Windows desktop, Windows tablet devices, and Windows Phone. These apps can also be placed in the Windows Store. UWP apps are compiled to native code for their target platforms by .NET Native

Supported Environments

.NET Core is supported by Microsoft on Windows, mac OS and Linux. On Linux, Microsoft primarily supports .NET Core running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Debian distribution families.

.NET Core currently supports X64 CPUs. On Windows, X86 is also supported. ARM64 and ARM32 are in progress.

A wide array of all the supported platforms is shown in the Table below.

OS Version Architectures Configurations
Windows Client 7 SP1 – 10 x64, x86
Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 – 2016 x64, x86 Full, Server Core, Nano (2016 only)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 x64
Fedora 23 x64
Debian 8.2 x64
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS x64
Linux Mint 17 x64
openSUSE 13.2 x64
Centos 7.1 x64
Oracle Linux 7.1 x64
Mac OSX 10.11 (El Capitan) x64

 

Which one to choose .NET 4.6 or .NET Core

.NET Core is not yet mature, until it’s fully mature and time-tested; in my view it’s not advisable to start building Enterprise LOB (line of business) applications using .NET Core. Hence, .NET 4.6 and ASP .NET 4.6 are more mature and time-tested until .NET Core becomes mature.

The Future of .NET

“.NET Core” is certainly the future of .NET Platform. But we are not there yet, it will be a while until this is widely accepted and industry really start to mold and accept its advantages and become more open to build light-weight, cross-platform applications using .NET. However, Microsoft envisions to continue with ASP .NET 4.6 as well. Reminder, ASP .NET Core 1.0 is NOT AN END for .NET 4.6 /ASP .NET 4.6 instead it’s a NEW BEGINNING.