.NET Classes

.NET conforms to Microsoft's Common Type System. This comprises a set of data types, permitted values and permitted operations that define the rules by which different languages can interact with one another – all co-operating languages that use these types can have their operations and values checked (by the Common Language Runtime) at runtime. .NET also provides its own built-in class library that provides all the primitive data types, together with higher-level classes that perform useful operations.

.NET classes are implemented as part of the Common Type System. Types include interfaces, value types and classes. .NET provides built-in primitive types as well as higher-level types that are useful in building applications. A class is a subset of Type (distinct from interfaces and value types) that encapsulates a particular set of methods, events and properties. The word object is usually used to refer to an instance of a class. An object is typically created by calling the system function ⎕NEW with the class as the first element of the argument. An assembly is a file that contains all of the code and metadata for one or more classes. Assemblies can be dynamic (created in memory as needed) or static (files on disk). In this document, "assembly" refers to a file (usually with a .dll extension) on disk. Classes support inheritance, in that every class (but one) is based on a base class.

Through the use of instances of .NET classes, Dyalog gains access to a huge amount of component technology that is provided by .NET; the benefits of this approach include enhanced reliability, software management, code reusage and reduced maintenance.