The Base Class Library (BCL) is a standard library available to all languages using the .NET Framework. In order to make the programmer's job easier, .NET includes the BCL in order to encapsulate a large number of common functions, such as file reading and writing, graphic rendering, database interaction, and XML document manipulation. It is much larger in scope than standard libraries for most other languages, including C++, and would be comparable in scope to the standard libraries of Java. The BCL is sometimes incorrectly referred to as the Framework Class Library (FCL), which is a superset including the Microsoft.* namespaces.