Chapter 3. The Metadata System
Chapter 2 described the different types that the CLR supports and demonstrated how developers can define new types as well as use types defined in other languages. The essential facility that enables such type sharing between compilers is the metadata system, which is the focus of this chapter.
Metadata is not a new concept. Language-specific metadata facilities have existed for a number of years; a header file in C/C++, for example, is a metadata facility. A C++ header file may contain the declaration of a new type, such as a structure or class. By including such a header file in their own source files, other developers may program against the new type. A header file is a severely limited metadata facility, for ...
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