Assemblies in ASP.Net using VB.NET

Assemblies

An assembly is the actual .dll file on our hard drive where the classes in the .NET Framework are stored. For example, all the classes contained in the ASP.NET Framework are located in an assembly named System.Web.dll. In other word, an assembly is the primary unit of deployment, security, and version control in the .NET Framework. The .NET Framework (version 2.0) includes 51 assemblies.

There are two types of assemblies:
 

  • Private: A private assembly can be used by only a single application.
     
  • Shared: A shared assembly can be used by all applications located on the same server.

Shared assemblies are located in the Global Assembly Cache (GAC). For example, the System.Web.dll assembly and all the other assemblies included with the .NET Framework are located in the Global Assembly Cache. GAC is physically located in our computer's \WINDOWS\Assembly folder. There is a separate copy of every assembly in your \WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727 folder. The first set of assemblies is used at runtime and the second set is used at compile time.

Before we can use a class contained in an assembly in our application, we must add a reference to the assembly. By default, an ASP.NET application references the most common assemblies contained in the Global Assembly Cache:
 

  • mscorlib.dll
  • System.dll
  • System.Configuration.dll
  • System.Web.dll
  • System.Data.dll
  • System.Web.Services.dll
  • System.Xml.dll
  • System.Drawing.dll
  • System.EnterpriseServices.dll
  • System.Web.Mobile.dll

To use any particular class in the .NET Framework, we must do two things. First, our application must reference the assembly that contains the class. Second, our application must import the namespace associated with the class. In most cases, we won't worry about referencing the necessary assembly because the most common assemblies are referenced automatically or say by default. However, if we need to use a specialized assembly, we need to add a reference explicitly to the assembly. For example, if we need to interact with Active Directory by using the classes in the System.DirectoryServices namespace then we will need to add a reference to the System.DirectoryServices.dll assembly to our application.

Each class entry in the .NET Framework SDK documentation lists the assembly and namespace associated with the class. For example, if we look up the MessageQueue class in the documentation, we will discover that this class is located in the System.Messaging namespace located in the System.Messaging.dll assembly.

If we are using Visual Web Developer, we can add a reference to an assembly explicitly by selecting the menu option Website, Add Reference, and selecting the name of the assembly that we need to reference.

For example, to add a reference to the System.Messaging.dll assembly results in the web configuration file as given below.

 
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
  <
system.web>
    <
compilation>
      <
assemblies>
        <
add assembly="System.Messaging, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B03F5F7F11D50A3A"/>
      </assemblies>
    </
compilation>
  </
system.web>
</
configuration>

 

If we prefer not to use Visual Web Developer, then we can add the reference to the System.Messaging.dll assembly by creating the above file by other hand.

HAVE A GREAT CODING!

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