.NET assemblies and resources

Define Assembly. 

An Assembly is a collection, either an executable (.exe) or a dynamic link library (.dll), that forms a logical unit of functionality and built to efficiently work together. .NET Framework can be used to compile assemblies.  

What is manifest?     

• An Assembly data like version, scope, security information (strong name),etc is stored in manifest.
• The manifest also contains a reference to the resource and classes.
• The manifest of an assembly is stored in either an .exe or a .dll with Microsoft intermediate language (MSIL) code.

Explain GAC. 

GAC stands for global assembly cache. It is an area of memory reserved to store the assemblies of all .NET applications that are running on a certain machine. It shares assemblies among multiple .NET applications. The assemblies must have a strong name and must be publicly shared to be

installed in the GAC.

What is the use of SN.EXE?

SN stands for Strong Name.
Strong Name Tool (Sn.exe) is used to sign assemblies with strong names.
’sn.exe’ provides options for security issues like:
key management
signature generation
signature verification

What is a Satellite assembly?

A satellite assembly contains resources specific to a given language.
With the help of these, the resources of different languages can be kept in different assemblies. However, at the runtime the chosen option generates the output in the desired language. The implementation code is kept different from the resource files that are used for conversion.

Explain the different types of assemblies in .NET, i.e. Static and dynamic assemblies, Private and Shared assemblies, Single-file and Multiple-file assemblies.

Static assemblies contain interfaces, classes, resources, etc for the assembly and are stored on disk in portable executable (PE) files.

Dynamic assemblies execute directly from the memory and can be saved to the disk only after their execution.

A private assembly is the one that is available for the exclusively for an application.

A shared assembly can be shared by multiple applications.

Multiple file assemblies are contained in multiple files and are linked through the assembly manifest. The CLR manages them as a unit. A single file assembly is not split across multiple files.