This document provides information on the history and key components of the .NET Framework as well as new features introduced in version 4.5. It began with version 1.0 in 2002 and the latest version is 4.5.2. The .NET Framework includes the Common Language Runtime (CLR) which manages code execution, the Common Type System (CTS) which defines supported data types, and garbage collection for automatic memory management. Version 4.5 introduced improvements such as larger array support, background garbage collection, and regular expression matching timeouts. The document also summarizes WCF concepts like contracts and bindings and describes transport, message, and transport with message credential security options.