This book describes the basic principles of the .NET platform, the .NET type system, and the various development tools used to create .NET applications. The basic features of the C# 2005 programming language are presented, including new syntactic constructs that appeared with the release of .NET 2.0, as well as the syntax and semantics of the CIL language. The book discusses the .NET assembly format and the .NET base class libraries. file I/O, remote access capabilities, Windows Forms application design, accessing databases using ADO.NET, creating ASP.NET Web applications and XML Web services. The book contains many examples of program code designed to help the reader master the proposed material. The example code can be downloaded from the publisher's website.