Architecture of .NET

Even though it is a decade old, the .NET framework is still well-built and makes sure to make it tiered, moduler, and hierarchical. Each tier provides specific functionalities to the user—some in terms of security and some in terms of language capabilities. The tiers produce a layer of abstraction to the end users and hide most of the complexities of the native operating system as much as possible. The .NET framework is partitioned into modules, with each of them having their own distinct responsibilities. The higher tiers request specific capabilities from the lower tiers and hence it is hierarchical.

Let's look at a diagram of the .NET architecture:

The preceding diagram depicts how the .NET framework architecture is laid out. On its lowest level, it is the operating system that interacts with the kernel APIs that are present in the operating system. The Common Language Infrastructure connects with the CLR, which provides services that monitor each code execution and managed memory, handles exceptions, and ensures that the application behaves as intended. Another important goal of the infrastructure is language inter-operability. The common language runtime is yet again abstracted with the .NET class libraries. This layer holds the binaries that the language is built on, and all of the compilers built on top of the libraries provide the same compiled code so that the CLR can understand the code and interact easily with one another.

Before going further, let's quickly look at some of the key aspects on which languages are built on the .NET framework.