Overview of the .NET Assembly
The .NET assembly is much like the term used in manufacturing. Within the .NET assembly is a detailed description of the pieces and parts that went into and are required by the assembly. The .NET assembly is self describing. The information about the assembly (as opposed to the executable code) is known as metadata. The following is a general list of the metadata that is typically associated with an assembly:
Name—An assembly contains the name of the assembly as metadata. At first, you might wonder why this is required or even necessary. With traditional DLLs, simply renaming the DLL would cause an application to break. With assemblies, the name is embedded in the file that contains the assembly. An assembly that ...
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