Is the .NET Framework a collection of DLLs only?

[silenceseeker2003]

I am trying to understand what's in the .NET Framework that makes it
attractive for software companies to *require* .NET to be installed on
an end user PC for their application to work.

For exmaple PowerQuest DriveImage 7 is such a program.
Sony Vegas 6 (as opposed to ver. 4) is another example.

Is it only a collection of DLLs that extend the Windows environment in
a fashion similar to the MFC DLLs?

Or does it contain more than that?

If the latter, what does it contain?

A virtual machine (similar to Java)?
A database engine (similar to DB2)?

I am curious to know what could possibly make a 24MB distribution...
There must be something significant other than another set of rich GUI
controls, right?

Thanks for any tip you may share!
Sam

 

[Greg Young [MVP]]

The redistributable contains the CLR (a virtual machine) all the associated
DLLs for the framework, integration for IIS (if you have it), alot of useful
tools (such as gacutil, ngen, regasm and some other items)

Take a gander at the windows\microsoft.net\2.0.50727 folder after your
install.

 

[silenceseeker2003]

Greg, thanks your answer - it certainly answers some of my questions
(the CLR is Microsoft's answer to Java?).

And while at this, do you happen to know why applications that require
the .NET framework take sooooooo much time load?

(they run fine after they load, but load time exceeds 10X the previous
version of same exact application before it was upgraded to .NET)

Thanks.

 

[Greg Young [MVP]]

The first step is to setup an instance of the CLR (similar to what happens
in java) this is overhead that was not previously present.

Another large reason is the fact that it has to convert (compile) code from
IL to a native format generally the initial startup requires a good amount
of this. You can use ngen to precompile assemblies ... this will help make
your apps load quite a bit quicker (depending what they are doing).

It also has to load up dlls when you first start your application (including
checking privileges etc for being able to run those dlls given your current
context).

Cheers,

Greg