The .NET Framework is Microsoft’s managed code programming model for building applications on Windows clients, servers, and mobile or embedded devices. Developers use .NET to build applications of many types: Web applications, server applications, smart client applications, console applications, database applications, and more.

Technologies:
Windows Presentation Foundation
The Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation provides the foundation for building applications and high fidelity experiences in Windows Vista, blending together application UI, documents, and media content, while exploiting the full power of your computer.

ADO.NET
ADO.NET provides consistent access to data sources such as Microsoft SQL Server, as well as data sources exposed through OLE DB and XML. Data-sharing consumer applications can use ADO.NET to connect to these data sources and retrieve, manipulate, and update data.

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
Windows Communication Foundation is a set of .NET technologies for building and running connected systems. It is a new breed of communications infrastructure built around the Web services architecture.

ASP.NET
Microsoft ASP.NET is a set of Web application development technologies that enables programmers to build dynamic Web sites, web applications, and XML Web services.