What is an Assembly?

An Assembly is the building block of a VB.NET application. An Assembly is a complied and versioned collection of code and metadata. Once complete forms an "atomic" functional unit.

Assemblies come in the form of a Dynamic Link Library (DLL) file or Executable an program file(EXE). They differ as they contain information found in a type libraries. All the .NET programs are constructed from these Assemblies. Assemblies are made of two parts. Firstly, the manifest which is similar to a Table Of Contents(TOC). This holds the name and version of the assembly. Secondly, the modules which are internal files of Intermediate Language (IL) code which are ready to run.

When programming, developers don't directly deal with assemblies as the CLR and the .NET framework takes care of that behind the scenes.

An assembly includes:

• Information for each public class or type used in the assembly
• Information on all public methods in each class. For instance, the method name and return values (if any)
• Information on every public parameter for each method, such as the parameter's name and type
• Information on public enumerations including names and values
• Information on the assembly version (each assembly has a specific version number)
• Intermediate Language code to execute
• Required resources such as pictures, assembly metadata

Written by Sandeep Mogulla, Webmaster at www.startvbdotnet.com

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