Types of assemblies

Question

Specify various types of assemblies and explain them.

Answer 1

Following are two types of assemblies:

a) Private Assembly – It is an assembly which is used by the single application. All these assemblies are placed in a local folder in which client application has been installed.

b) Public or Shared Assembly – It is the assembly which is allowed to be shared by the several applications. This assembly should reside in the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) having a strong name assigned to it.

For instance, imagine that you have created a DLL having the content about the business logic. This DLL may be used by your client application. To run the client application, DLL must be involved in the same folder in which client application is being installed. This makes assembly private to your application. Now suppose that the DLL is required to be reused in different applications. Hence, in place of copying the DLL in each client application folder, this can be kept in a global assembly cache by using the GAC tool. These assemblies are termed as shared assemblies.