NET 3.5 has passed the six-monthmark since being officially released so this seems a good time to strip thehype away and focus on just why the Microsoft offering of Web-readybuilding-block applications is here to stay. Herewith a mere handful of the strategic advantages afforded by theever-expanding NETframework set of technologies:

1.      Dramaticboosts in performance with pages enabled for output caching.  After executing a page and sending it to therequesting user, NETframework components leave the result in memory and serve the cachedversion when another user requests the same page (or part of it).  This reduces the communication load with theback-end database, too.

2.      Leveraginga broader set of stock knowledge in programming languages.  On top of VBScript and Jscript, teams of NET framework architectslike those at well-regarded HyTech Professionals () in Nashua (NH) code inno less than 25 languages like C#, VB.NET, JScript.NET, and Visual Studio2008.  This is pretty much what you?dexpect for a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner that delivers over 100applications every year on the NET framework.

3.      Greatadministrative and project management tools over the development lifecycle.  VS.NET enterprise edition helpswith planning, analysis, four modeling options, three test tool classes, andproductivity owing to a slew of templates.

4.      UnderReporting Services 2005, default access security relies on the organizationhewing to Windows Authentication mode. For Web-facing applications and to provide reports through the companyfirewall, happily, one can a write a bit of .NET code under the NET framework IAuthenticationExtensionsecurity extension interface so as to override the default and deploy athird-party security manager.