Hi Chris,

From your description, you have some questions about the .NET assembly's
metadata and strong-name binding ,correct?

As for metadata, it is always stored in assembly file itself(store as a
header section in assembly and have fixed structure and format). Thus,
runtime can read information about assembly from its metadata. Metadata can
not only contain strong-name info, but also many other useful info such as
Type information, assembly properties info....

For strong-name, it is one feature which utilize metadata as the storage.
Strongname need a key pair and after assembly is built, strong-name key
token has been embeded into the assembly's metadata as an identity.

Here are some articles which introduce some on them:

#Metadata and Reflection in .NET
http://www.odetocode.com/Articles/288.aspx

#Security Briefs: Strong Names and Security in the .NET Framework
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa302416.aspx

If you have interests, you can use the "ildasm.exe" or "reflector" tools to
open the assembly and view strong-name info.

For Visual Studio, it is an development tool/IDE, the project file does
store some assembly name and path info. However, those information doesn't
related to the runtime assembly binding and locating behavior.  Those path
and file info(in project file) just help indicate a certain location where
Visual Studio can find a copy of the assembly so that when performing the
compile/build, visual Studio can locate an assembly(for reference).

At runtime, the CLR runtime will use another strategy to locate any
assembly that is referenced by the application. Here is the MSDN reference
describe .NET runtime's assembly loading behavior:

#How the Runtime Locates Assemblies  
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/yx7xezcf(VS.80).aspx

Hope this helps.

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead



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