Scribd
Upload
23 views1 page

1

The document discusses the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) which provides a language-neutral platform for application development and execution. It allows functionality like exception handling, garbage collection, security, and interoperability to be available across .NET supported languages. CLI assemblies contain Common Intermediate Language (CIL) code stored in Portable Executable (PE) format. Assemblies have a name, version, culture, and public key token that identifies the private key used to sign the assembly. .NET uses code access security (CAS) based on evidence associated with an assembly, like its source, to determine permissions granted.

Uploaded by

Lavanya Karthik
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
23 views1 page

1

The document discusses the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) which provides a language-neutral platform for application development and execution. It allows functionality like exception handling, garbage collection, security, and interoperability to be available across .NET supported languages. CLI assemblies contain Common Intermediate Language (CIL) code stored in Portable Executable (PE) format. Assemblies have a name, version, culture, and public key token that identifies the private key used to sign the assembly. .NET uses code access security (CAS) based on evidence associated with an assembly, like its source, to determine permissions granted.

Uploaded by

Lavanya Karthik
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 1

Common Language Infrastructure (CLI)

Main article: Common Language Infrastructure


The purpose of CLI is to provide a language-neutral platform for application dev
elopment and execution, including functions for exception handling, garbage coll
ection, security, and interoperability. By implementing the core aspects of .NET
Framework within the scope of CLI, this functionality will not be tied to a sin
gle language but will be available across the many languages supported by the fr
amework. Microsoft's implementation of CLI is CLR.
Main article: Assembly (CLI)
Common Intermediate Language (CIL) code is housed in CLI assemblies. As mandated
by the specification, assemblies are stored in Portable Executable (PE) format,
common on Windows platform for all DLL and EXE files. The assembly consists of
one or more files, one of which must contain the manifest, which has the metadat
a for the assembly. The complete name of an assembly (not to be confused with th
e filename on disk) contains its simple text name, version number, culture, and
public key token. Assemblies are considered equivalent if they share the same co
mplete name, excluding the revision of the version number. A private key can als
o be used by the creator of the assembly for strong naming. The public key token
identifies which private key an assembly is signed with. Only the creator of th
e keypair (typically .NET developer signing the assembly) can sign assemblies th
at have the same strong name as a previous version assembly, since the creator i
s in possession of the private key. Strong naming is required to add assemblies
to Global Assembly Cache.
Security
.NET has its own security mechanism with two general features: Code Access Secur
ity (CAS), and validation and verification. CAS is based on evidence that is ass
ociated with a specific assembly. Typically the evidence is the source of the as
sembly (whether it is installed on the local machine or has been downloaded from
the intranet or Internet). CAS uses evidence to determine the permissions grant
ed to the code. Other code can demand that calling code be granted a specified p
ermission. The demand causes CLR to perform a call stack walk: every assembly of
each method in the call stack is checked for the required permission; if any as
sembly is not granted the permission a security exception is thrown.

You might also like