Visual Basic.NET Reflection Reference Manual

Author: (German) Gilani et al
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-02-01
Features: One of the advantages of .NET is using metadata to describe the contents of assemblies. However, it should be clarified that describing components with metadata is not the concept of .NET (COM also uses metadata), but many problems caused by metadata in COM/COM+ (such as metadata not being synchronized with components) have been resolved in .NET. Reflection is a key feature of .NET, allowing runtime programmable lookup and analysis of assembly metadata, thereby enabling dynamic processing of applications. This book comprehensively introduces the concept of reflection and its related application technologies, including the reasons for using dynamic binding and how the Reflection API supports it; detecting metadata such as assembly classes; dynamically loading assemblies and creating objects and calling methods; modifying object data using reflection; controlling the compilation process with attributes, and finally, how to use reflection to create extensible, customizable, component-based applications.