A boundary between objects in the same application scope, which is established by the Common Language Runtime. Application domains provide the ability to isolate multiple applications running within a process.

A component designed to operate within the Microsoft .NET environment. Assemblies are of two types, DLLs (dynamically-linked library) and executables.

Common Intermediate Language. See MSIL.

Common Language Runtime. The execution engine for .NET Framework applications.

Component Object Module. Defines how object linking and embedding (OLE) objects and their clients interact within processes or across process boundaries.

Microsoft Common Type Specification. A comprehensive specification for a language-independent object-oriented data type system that is capable of representing simple data types, such as integers, or more complex data types that are embodied as classes.

Dynamically-linked library. A library that is linked to an application at run time, rather than during compilation. A DLL is a module that contains functions and data.

See Microsoft .NET Framework.

Integrated development environment. A system for software development, typically including a syntax-directed editor and integrated support for compiling the program and relating errors back to the source code.

Intermediate Language. See MSIL.

Java Virtual Machine. Compiles Java into machine-independent object code, or bytecode.

Code executed and managed by the CLR.

The programming model of the .NET platform for building and running XML Web services and applications.

Microsoft Intermediate Language. A high-level object-oriented language that is similar to Java bytecode. The Microsoft .NET environment compiles source code into MSIL. At run time, the CLR compiles MSIL into machine code.

Type Library Importer. Provides interoperability with existing COM components.

Uniform (or Universal) Naming Convention. A convention for specifying directories, servers, and other resources on a network.

Code that is executed outside the CLR.

Visual Studio .NET is a set of development tools for building a variety of applications. The Visual Studio IDE supports several languages, including Visual C# .NET.