1.9. The Assembly/Namespace/Type Distinction
Each of us understands the importance of code libraries. The point of libraries such as MFC, Java Enterprise Edition, and ATL is to give developers a well-defined set of existing code to leverage in their applications. However, the C# language does not come with a language-specific code library. Rather, C# developers leverage the language-neutral .NET libraries. To keep all the types within the base class libraries well organized, the .NET platform makes extensive use of the namespace concept.
A namespace is a grouping of semantically related types contained in an assembly. For example, the System.IO namespace contains file I/O-related types, the System.Data namespace defines basic database types, ...
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