The .NET Framework 4.5 Improves Performance

The .NET Framework 4.5 (.NET 4.5) is included in Visual Studio 2012, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2012. The Framework, which consists of a run-time environment and class libraries for developing managed application code, has been upgraded to enable the implementation of highly responsive applications and brings other performance improvements that could reduce application load time and memory usage. Modern applications (which run on Windows 8 and Windows RT) can use a subset of .NET 4.5. The upgrade is mostly backward compatible with .NET 4, but existing code may need modifications to use the new version.

Framework’s Many Components Upgraded

The .NET Framework includes the common language runtime (CLR), a software component for running and loading applications, and class libraries, hierarchically organized collections of code that developers can use in their applications to build graphical user interfaces (UIs), access files, work with databases (with ADO.NET, for example), and build Web applications (with ASP.NET, for example).