Side-by-Side Assemblies

Windows Installer

previous page next page

Side-by-Side Assemblies

Side-by-Side assembly sharing is an infrastructure that is used to do the following:

  • Safely share assemblies among multiple applications
  • Offset some negative effects of sharing, for example, DLL conflicts.
Instead of having a single version of an assembly that assumes backward compatibility with all applications, side-by-side assembly sharing enables multiple versions of a COM or Win32 assembly to run simultaneously on a system. For more information, see Isolated Applications and Side-by-side Assemblies.

Side-by-Side Assemblies can be installed as Shared Assemblies or as Private Assemblies.

Side-by-Side Assemblies are not available on systems earlier than Windows XP.


Send comments about this topic to Microsoft

Build date: 8/13/2009

© 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

previous page start next page