Understanding the .NET Framework in its entirety, including keeping track of the APIs that are available in various versions (for example, 3.5, 4, 4.5, 4.5.1, and so on, and platforms such as Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and Silverlight 5) is a near impossible undertaking. What software developers and architects need is a high-level framework to logically partition the .NET Framework and identify the APIs that should be used to address a given requirement or category of requirements.
API boundaries in the .NET Framework can be a little fuzzy. Some logical APIs span multiple assemblies and namespaces. Some are nicely contained within a neat hierarchy within a single root namespace. To confuse matters even further, single assemblies might contain portions of multiple APIs. The most practical way to distinguish an API is to use the API's root namespace or the namespace that contains the majority of the API's implementation. We will point out the...