Latest Features and Updates of .NET 7

Updated 22 Nov 2023
Published 24 Jun 2022
Satyam Chaturvedi 2706 Views
Latest Features and Updates of .NET 7

Microsoft is known for constantly upgrading its products to ensure its customers avail the best of the technologies and features. .Net has gained the reputation of being the most flexible and efficient software development framework since its inception.

Microsoft has been continually innovating and evolving the .Net framework to make it faster and better.

Microsoft has recently released the third and fourth preview version of .NET 7, along with .NET Core 7 Preview 1 and Entity Framework 7 Preview 1. Microsoft claimed that these fresh versions of .NET bring improved and strong support for cloud-native containers and applications.

The development community was eagerly waiting for these updates, which were pushed back due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The .NET 7 will ultimately integrate the fragmented and widespread tools available for the developers.

Microsoft did launch .NET 6 in 2021, but it lacked the assimilation of a plethora of tools and key components.

The .NET 7 will complement the concerns of the developers and allows them to build a wide range of desktop, mobile, and web applications using a common compiler, base class, and application runtime.

What is .NET 7?

.NET 7 has been developed on the strong footing of .NET 6 to provide a higher degree of reliability and productivity. It simplifies the development experience with the unification of application runtime and base libraries. 

The .NET 7 is more focused on better support for cloud-native scenarios. It offers a plethora of tools, that enable the application developers to migrate the legacy products and use the containers to build cloud-based applications simplify the developer experience by making it easier to work with containers. 

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.NET 7 has also addressed another important concern, which is security and enhancement of runtime execution. It offers a simple configuration of authentication and authorization process to enhance the application security and runtime execution.

.NET 7 comes with 18 months of free support by Microsoft. It is compatible with the below architectures:

  • Intel x64
  • AMD x64
  • ARM (aarch64)
  • LinuxONE (s390x)
  • IBM Z

What’s New in .NET 7?

.NET 7 is a worthy successor of .NET 6, as it comes with a whole new philosophy and offering for the developer community. Here we will cover some basic traits offered by the .NET 7 :  

Performance Improvement

.NET 7 comes with various components that can improve the code and application performance. The .NET 6 already gave a massive boost to the performance and .NET 7 takes it a few notches higher.

It mitigates several performance issues and ensures you do not need to alter the source code while migrating the application to the cloud.

Minimal APIs Improvements

Minimal APIs were launched in .Net 6 and it allowed the developers to build lightweight APIs without struggling with the challenges of controllers. The .Net 7 comes with additional enhancements and support for various features like grouping endpoints with a route prefix.

Developers can easily implement crosscutting concerns with the help of endpoint filters and simply bypass the usage of controllers using action filters.

HTTP 3 Support

HTTP 3 was initially launched as a preview feature in .Net 6, and it will be offered out of the box with .NET 7. This will offer various TLS features and improve performance like never before.

Blazor Hybrid Support

It will enable developers to combine existing Blazor components and use web view control to embed them into a desktop app, which offers seamless access to all the core hardware APIs.

It gives the web application direct access to the local system resources such as webcam, audio-video system, or file system.

Observability

.NET 7 endorses better observability using the OpenTelemetry, where the latter is a set of Software Development Kit (SDK), tools, integrations, and APIs that assist the developers to build and manage telemetric data such as metrics and logs.

.NET 7 is all set to bring more transparency and efficiency to the existing observability.

Native AOT (Ahead-Of-Time compilation)

It ensures the code generation at the application’s build time instead of run time. This methodology offers quicker startup time, faster rendering, simpler applications, and more effective memory usage.

The Native AOT was initially introduced in Preview 2, but it was in an experimental state. With the release of .NET 7 Preview 3, the developers can avail the benefits of Native AOT.

Startup Time Enhancement

The primary focus area of Microsoft while developing the .NET 7 was to improve the code performance and application startup time. In Preview 3, the .NET 7 has re-implemented the call counting stubs and precoding to considerably improve the application startup time.

It also enables the Write-Xor-Execute option, which is another innovative offering of .NET 7.

Microseconds & Nanoseconds in Time and Date structures

.NET 7 4th preview has introduced milliseconds and microseconds to the time and date implementations, which makes it easy to manage these structures.

Earlier the software developers had to perform calculations on the “tick” value (100ns) to identify the values of microseconds and nanoseconds. The .NET 7 offers a separate API surface area, that addresses the date and time structures issues. 

On Stack Replacement (OSR)

It is another major improvement in .NET 7 which improves the application startup time and overall performance.

With the implementation of OSR, the code could be altered mid-execution by the application runtime. OSR enables the runtime to quickly jit all methods and move to the more optimized ones if required. 

GC Regions

Microsoft has activated the region’s functionality in .NET 7 Preview 3. It will cater to the memory utilization requirements for high throughput applications. .NET 7 ensures that regions are available for all platforms except NativeAOT and macOS.

Some Exciting Features of .NET 7

.NET 7 comes with some exciting features that not only enhance the performance but also make it easier for the developers to build complex applications with ease.

  • Cloud-Native architecture – This feature is incorporated to improve the scaled application by equipping them with autonomous microservices, that can be scaled and deployed individually. These microservices make the configuration of cloud-based applications easier while offering better authentication and authorization capabilities.
  • .NET MAUI (Multi-Platform Application UI) – It is undoubtedly the future of the cross-platform native User Interface. NET. It supports the .NET SDK toolsets, allows enhanced application performance, shares more codebase, and improves the internal development loop experience.
  • Reduced long-term development costs – The .NET 7 offers the microservices architecture, which is highly flexible and a massive evolution over the conventional monolithic architecture. It improves the overall productivity while reducing the development cost and efforts. 
  • Improved .NET Upgrade Assistant – .NET 7 comes with various improvements to assist the developers to upgrade their existing application portfolios efficiently. It includes various code fixers, code analyzers, and in0built support for a wide variety of application types. 
  • Orleans – It is a cross-platform software framework for developing scalable and distributed interactive apps based on the .NET Framework. It comes with comprehensive documentation and enhanced integration with cloud services such as Azure Container Apps and Azure App Services. 
  • Enhanced support for Containers – Containers become the preferred method for any enterprise to deploy microservices and cloud-native applications.  Microsoft has worked hard on this aspect and improved the observability of containers while making the container images crisp and secure. 
  • Hot Reload – It is a long-awaited and much-requested feature that ensures simplification of the app modernization process. .NET 7 Hot Reload feature implements code changes without restarting the application. It enables developers to include the code changes to stylesheets without losing the application state.

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How to Install .NET 7?

You can simply download .NET 7 Preview 2 or Preview 3 from Microsoft’s website and install it. Here we have mentioned the installation process of .NET Preview 2.

how to install .net 7

Step 1 – Simply double click on the .NET 7 Installer on your Windows or macOS system and it will initiate the installation process. Click on the Install button.

Step 2 – The installation process may take a couple of minutes as it installs various components and tools that come along with .NET 7. You can click on the Close button to finish the installation process.

Step 3 – If you want to verify the version of the .NET version is running on your system, then kindly type the given command in the command prompt.

wmic product get description | findstr /C:.NET

how to install .net 7

The Future of .NET

Microsoft built the .NET to avail the benefits of the internet revolution where distributed systems stay connected over the internet. It became the forefront of internet innovation as it supports multiple languages, a common base of APIs and Libraries, and single application runtime.

The .NET has attained unprecedented popularity due to its features and capabilities. However, any technology must evolve to stay relevant, and .NET is no exception here.

Microsoft brought .NET Core, which is known as the biggest evolution of this product due to its open-source and cross-platform nature. Now .NET 7 is another evolution of an existing matured platform. We can expect the general release of .NET 7 by November 2022 and expect the patches and support for the next 18 months.

Microsoft is known for encouraging code contributors and innovative ideas. It will certainly push the .NET ecosystem, and further, evolve it to make it a platform of choice for developers in the years to come. The future of .NET is very bright and shining and it will equip the developer community to innovate and develop state-of-the-art applications in the future.

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Conclusion

There was so much excitement in the market since the launch of the .NET 6, as it gave a glimpse of what developers could expect in 2022 with.Net 7. It offers some pathbreaking features and capabilities, which makes it the right time to migrate to .Net 7. 

.NET 7 offers brilliant assimilation of tools and features, that enables developers to build modern application with enhanced performance and improved security.

If you are planning to shift to the .NET 7, then you can fetch more information about ML.Net, WPF, WinForms, Nuget, and Roslyn enhancements.

You can also get in touch with our expert consultants. Arka Softwares is a renowned .NET development company, that possesses decade-long experience in developing complex and scalable .NET applications for enterprises.

We can certainly understand your unique business requirement to build a suitable .NET application for your business. 

FAQs for.NET 7

  • Does .NET 7 support Cloud-Native scenarios?

    Yes, .NET 7 duly supports the Cloud-Native scenarios to make it easier for application developers to migrate legacy projects to the cloud environment with the help of containers. .NET 7 also offers seamless setup and configuration options to make authentication and authorization secured while enhancing the app runtime execution.

  • What is .NET MAUI?

    It is an innovative cross-platform native UI (User Interface) development toolkit, that has been released with .NET 7. The MAUI preview 13 has been launched to improve the application performance and tooling support.

  • What is On Stack Replacement (OSR) in .NET 7?

    It is an important feature that allows developers to change the code amid the execution of a method. It allows the long-running and frequently used methods to move to an optimized version amid execution, so the application runtime can fetch the methods quickly and then switch over to an enhanced version. It improves the application performance and code execution.

  • What are Blazor Hybrid applications?

    Blazor Hybrid applications can leverage the abilities of web technologies like CSS and HTML to incorporate additional features and functionalities. A Blazor Hybrid application utilizes an embedded WebView control to avail the native device capabilities to offer immersive web UI.

  • What is .NET Orleans?

    It is a cross-platform framework that enables developers to build scalable, modern, distributed, and robust applications. It leverages the productive capabilities of .NET and incorporates it into distributed apps such as cloud services.

Satyam Chaturvedi

Satyam Chaturvedi is a Digital Marketing Manager at Arka Softwares, a leading app development company dealing in modern and futuristic solutions. He loves to spend his time studying the latest market insights.

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