Visual Basic® .NET Unleashed

Chapter 12. Defining Attributes

In This Chapter

• Understanding the Role of Attributes

• Annotating Types and Members

• Viewing Attributes with the MSIL Disassembler

• Extracting Attributes Using Reflection

• Creating Custom Attributes

• Component Attributes

• COM Interop Attributes

• Summary

Earlier in the book we mentioned that the sweeping changes in .NET required sweeping changes to the Visual Basic language. When you define, code, and compile a project in Visual Studio .NET, you are creating an assembly. Only part of that assembly is an executable. Another significant part of an assembly is the self-describing metadata.

Metadata, or additional declarative information, was added to combat “DLL Hell.” Until now, Windows applications were coded and compiled, and ...