a plurality of applications configured to handle requests submitted by remote devices over a network, the plurality of applications being written in different programming languages;

an application program interface to present functions used by the plurality of applications to access network and computing resources of the distributed computing system, wherein the application program interface comprises:

a first group of services related to creating Web applications, the first group of services comprising:

constructing Web services;

temporary caching resources;

performing an initial configuration;

creating controls and Web pages;

enabling security in Web server applications; and

accessing session state values;

a second group of services related to constructing client applications, the second group of services comprising:

creating windowing graphical user interface environments; and

enabling graphical functionality;

a third group of services related to data and handling XML documents, the third group of services comprising:

enabling management of data from multiple data sources; and

functions that enable XML processing; and

a fourth group of services related to base class libraries, the fourth group of services comprising:

defining various collections of objects;

accessing configuration settings and handling errors in configuration files;

debugging and tracing code execution;

customizing data according to cultural related information;

inputting and outputting of data;

enabling a programming interface to network protocols;

viewing loaded types, methods, and fields;

creating, storing and managing various culture-specific resources;

enabling system security and permissions;

installing and running services;

enabling character encoding;

enabling multi-threaded programming; and

facilitating runtime operations; and

a common language runtime layer that translates the plurality of applications written in different programming languages into an intermediate language, the intermediate language being:

executed natively by the common language runtime layer; and

configured to access the network and computing resources or the first, second, third, and fourth group of services requested by the remote devices, whereby a seamless integration between multi-language application development, with cross language inheritance is allowed and a robust and secure execution environment for multiple programming languages is provided.