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The Role of the Microsoft Namespaces

I’m sure you noticed while reading over the listings in Table 1-3 that System is the root namespace

for a good number of nested namespaces (System.IO, System.Data, etc.). As it turns out, however,

the .NET base class library defines a number of topmost root namespaces beyond System, the most

useful of which is named Microsoft.

In a nutshell, any namespace nested within Microsoft (e.g., Microsoft.CSharp, Microsoft.Ink,

Microsoft.ManagementConsole, and Microsoft.Win32) contain types that are used to interact with

services that are unique to the Windows operating system. Given this point, you should not assume

that these types could be used successfully on other .NET-enabled operating systems such as Mac

OS X. For the most part, this text will not dig into the details of the Microsoft rooted namespaces, so

be sure to consult the documentation if you are so interested.