.NET Core

.NET Core is a modular version of the .NET Framework designed to be portable across platforms for maximum code reuse and code sharing. In addition, .NET Core will be open-sourced and accept contributions from the community.

What is .NET Core?

.NET Core is portable across platforms because, although a subset of the full .NET Framework, it provides key functionality to implement the app features you need and reuse this code regardless of your platform target. In the past, different versions of .NET for different platforms lacked shared functionality for key tasks such as reading local files. Microsoft platforms that you will be able to target with .NET Core include traditional desktop Windows, as well as Windows devices and phones. When used third-party tools such as Xamarin, .NET Core should be portable to IOS and Android devices. In addition, .NET Core will soon be available for the Mac and Linux operating systems to enable web apps to run on those systems.

.NET Core is modular because it is released through NuGet in smaller assembly packages. Rather than one large assembly that contains most of the core functionality, .NET Core is made available as smaller feature-centric packages. This enables a more agile development model for us and allows you to pick and choose the functionality pieces that you need for your apps and libraries. For more information about .NET packages that release on NuGet, see, The .NET Framework and Out-of-Band Releases.

For existing apps, using Portable Class Libraries (PCL), Universal app projects and separating business logic from platform specific code is the best way to take advantage of .NET Core, and maximize your code reuse. For apps, Model-View-Controller (MVC) or the Model View-ViewModel (MVVM) patterns are good choices to make your apps easy to migrate to .NET Core.

In addition to the modularization of the .NET Framework, Microsoft is open-sourcing the .NET Core packages on GitHub, under the MIT license. This means you can clone the Git repo, read and compile the code and submit pull requests just like any other open source package you might find on GitHub.

.NET Core 5 is a modular runtime and library implementation that includes a subset of the .NET Framework. Currently it is feature complete on Windows, and in-progress builds exist for both Linux and OS X. .NET Core consists of a set of libraries, called “CoreFX”, and a small, optimized runtime, called “CoreCLR”. .NET Core is open-source, so you can follow progress on the project and contribute to it on GitHub:

• .NET Core Libraries (CoreFX)
• .NET Core Common Language Runtime (CoreCLR)

The CoreCLR runtime (Microsoft.CoreCLR) and CoreFX libraries are distributed via NuGet. The CoreFX libraries are factored as individual NuGet packages according to functionality, named “System.[module]” on nuget.org.

One of the key benefits of .NET Core is its portability. You can package and deploy the CoreCLR with your application, eliminating your application’s dependency on an installed version of .NET (e.g. .NET Framework on Windows). You can host multiple applications side-by-side using different versions of the CoreCLR, and upgrade them individually, rather than being forced to upgrade all of them simultaneously.

CoreFX has been built as a componentized set of libraries, each requiring the minimum set of library dependencies (e.g. System.Collections only depends on System.Runtime, not System.Xml). This approach enables minimal distributions of CoreFX libraries (just the ones you need) within an application, alongside CoreCLR. CoreFX includes collections, console access, diagnostics, IO, LINQ, JSON, XML, and regular expression support, just to name a few libraries. Another benefit of CoreFX is that it allows developers to target a single common set of libraries that are supported by multiple platforms.

AMQP Essentials

WHAT IS AMQP?
AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol) is a binary transfer protocol that was made for enterprise applications and server-to-server communication (e.g., for financial businesses), but today it can be very useful in the Internet of Things world, thanks to the following primary features. AMQP is binary and avoids a lot of the useless data sent on the wire when using a text-based protocol like HTTP; because of this, it can be considered compact, too. Thanks to its multiplexed nature, only one connection (over a reliable stream transport protocol) is needed to allow separated data flows between the two peers; and of course it’s symmetric and provides both a client-server communication style and peer-to-peer exchange. Finally, it’s secure and reliable, providing three different levels of QoS (Quality of Service).
The last ratified version of AMQP (1.0) is the only one standardized by OASIS (since 2012/10) and ISO/IEC (since 2014/05), and it’s totally broker-model agnostic, as it doesn’t define any requirements on broker internals (this is the main difference with previous “not standard” versions like 0.9.1); the protocol is focused on how the data is transferred on the wire.

AMQP ARCHITECTURE
AMQP has a layered model defined in the following way from a bottom-up perspective:
• TRANSPORT/FRAMING:
Defines the connection behavior  and the security layer between peers on top of an underlying network transport protocol (TCP, for example). It also adds the framing protocol and how the exchanged data is formatted and encoded.
• MESSAGING:
Provides messaging capabilities at application level on top of the previous layer defining the message
entity as built of one or more frames.

Regarding the network transport layer, AMQP isn’t strongly tied to TCP, and as such can be used with any reliable stream transport protocol; so, for example, SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol) and pipes are suitable.

AMQP COMMUNICATIONS
All the AMQP concepts—from connection, session, and link to performatives and messages—fit together to define how the communication happens between two peers. The main steps involved are:
• OPEN/CLOSE a connection (respectively after opening a network connection and before closing it) using “open” and “close” performatives
• BEGIN/END a session inside the connection thanks to “begin” and “end” performatives
• ATTACH/DETACH a link inside the session using “attach” and “detach” performatives
• SEND/RECEIVE messages with flow control thanks to “transfer, ” “disposition, ” and “flow” performatives