Professional Visual Basic 2012 and .NET 4.5 Programming

Versioning Issues

In COM, the versioning of DLLs had some significant limitations. For example, a different DLL with the same nominal version number could be indistinguishable from the one desired.

.NET's versioning scheme was specifically designed to alleviate the problems of COM. The major capabilities of .NET that solve versioning issues are as follows:

• Application isolation
• Side-by-side execution
• Self-describing components

Application Isolation

For an application to be isolated, it should be self-contained and independent. This means that the application should rely on its own dependencies for ActiveX controls, components, or files, and not share those files with other applications. The option of having application isolation is essential for a good solution to versioning problems.

If an application is isolated, components are owned, managed, and used by the parent application alone. If a component is used by another application, even if it is the same version, the other application must have its own copy. This ensures that each application can install and uninstall dependencies and not interfere with other applications.

Note

Does this sound familiar? Gray-haired people may recall that this is what most early Windows and DOS applications did until COM required registration of DLLs in the registry and placement of shared DLLs in the system directory.

The .NET Framework enables application isolation by allowing developers to create application-private assemblies. These ...