Chapter 2 covered the basics every programmer should know about deploying assemblies in the Microsoft .NET world. First we examined how the common language runtime (CLR) resolves assembly references without needing any additional information from the registry. Next we considered how you can implement your own versioning and binding policies using a few simple configuration file settings. These two features represent a dramatic shift from traditional Microsoft Windows programming, and they distinguish .NET assemblies from traditional COM components. The easy deployment features in .NET are a great improvement for developers who are trying to keep all the parts of a large distributed application up-to-date. However, they only scratch the surface of what's really possible with .NET. This chapter considers some advanced techniques that enable you to create an automatically updating application or one that's built dynamically using assemblies from a remote server. These approaches represent a conceptual leap, but not a technological one. In fact, the examples presented in this chapter are still built on the assembly deployment model considered in Chapter 2 they just extend it to entirely new territory by integrating .NET XML Web services. |