What is Assemblies in .Net?

• Assembly is a logical collection of smallest unit in .Net Framework.
• Example: .DLL File contains the application code, the .aspx file, .ascx user controls, .gif, .bmp, .ico file and other files like Resource file (.resx), etc.
• In summary, Assemblies is a basic fundamental unit of application development and deployment in the .Net Framework
• An assembly contains the MSIL code, which the common language runtime executes, and the type metadata.
• An assembly also contains an assembly manifest that contains the assembly metadata. This metadata contains information about the assembly version, its security identity, the resources required by the assembly, and the scope of the assembly.
• Assemblies are the smallest units to which the .NET Framework grants permissions. They provide security boundaries within the .NET Framework. You specify the permission required by your application while building assemblies. When the assembly is loaded into the runtime, the assembly sends a request to the runtime to grant the permission.

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Before getting deeply into the subject we will first know how Businesses are related to Internet, what .NET means to them and what exactly .NET is built upon. As per the product documentation from a Business perspective, there are three phases of the Internet. The First phase gets back to the early 1990’s when Internet first came into general use and which brought a big revolution for Businesses. In the First phase of the Internet Businesses designed and launched their Website’s and focused on the number of hits to know how many customers were visiting their site and interested in their products, etc. The Second phase is what we are in right now and in this phase Businesses are generating revenue through Online Transactions. We are now moving into the Third phase of the Internet where profit is the main priority. The focus here is to Businesses effectively communicate with their customers and partners who are geographically isolated, participate in Digital Economy and deliver a wide range of services. How can that be possible? The answer, with .NET.

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Let’s take a brief look at this issue which used to give many headaches to System Administrators and Code Writers. There is no need to panic listening to something called “DLL Hell” as this problem is now totally eliminated with .NET Framework 1.1. It’s good to know what used to happen before with the deployed applications, the way they used to behave when new version of an existing application was installed and what exactly is “DLL Hell” and so on.
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