.NET Common Language Runtime Unleashed

Administering Policy

Binding is the mapping of an assembly reference to a physical assembly. A physical assembly is usually a DLL. A binding policy is a statement of the rules on how the binding should take place. Most likely you will use policy to upgrade an assembly from one version to another. Although you can also use it to specify the source for a file in case a portion of the assembly needs to be downloaded. A binding policy can be modified in three ways: through an application policy file, through a publisher policy file, and through a machine policy file. Administering each of these policy files is discussed next.

Default Binding Policy

As shown earlier, applications have the identity of referenced assemblies that are stored at compile ...