Chapter 13. Metadata and Reflection
Metadata, which is often described as data about data, is a description of the data in an assembly. It represents the state of the assembly. Metadata is information pertaining to the assembly, including a detailed description of each type, the attributes of the assembly, and other particulars of the assembly itself. Metadata is similar to a type library in COM, except that metadata is persisted in the assembly that it describes. For this reason, assemblies are often referred to as self-describing. Because metadata is indigenous to the assembly, metadata cannot be lost and versioning problems are avoided. Metadata is emitted primarily by managed language compilers and consumed by metadata browsers, other .NET ...
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