In the presence of dot net framework, a program is not compiled to the native machine executable code; rather it gets compiled to an intermediate language code called Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) or Common Intermediate Language (CIL). The Dot Net Common Language Runtime (CLR) then converts this intermediate code at runtime to the machine executable code. The optimization is carried out at runtime. A program also does not call the operating system APIs directly; rather it delegates this task to the CLR which performs the desired operations on behalf of the program and returns the results of the operations back to the program. The CLR also performs the memory management, garbage collection, security and thread management on behalf of the program. Dot NET framework is shipped with the supporting object oriented framework of common code libraries, called the .NET Framework Class Library (FCL), to facilitate the common operations. Hence the .Net manages the overall execution of an application. This is the reason why the code running on .Net framework is sometimes called the managed code. The complete process is depicted in the following Figure. Note that only the CLR (and thus the .Net framework and not the user application) is interacting and coupled with the platform and operating system.
