Assembly and Difference Between EXE and DLL

Hi Arun,

In the .NET framework, an assembly is a compiled code library used for deployment, versioning, and security. There are two types: process assemblies (EXE) and library assemblies (DLL). A process assembly represents a process that will use classes defined in library assemblies. .NET assemblies contain code in CIL, which is usually generated from a CLI language, and then compiled into machine language at run time by the CLR just-in-time compiler.

An assembly can consist of one or more files. Code files are called modules. An assembly can contain more than one code module and since it is possible to use different languages to create code modules it is technically possible to use several different languages to create an assembly. Visual Studio however does not support using different languages in one assembly.

Refer for more

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_assembly

1.EXE is an extension used for executable files while DLL is the extension for a dynamic link library.
2.An EXE file can be run independently while a DLL is used by other applications.
3.A DLL file can be reused by other applications while an EXE cannot.
4.Exe is for single use whereas you can use Dll for multiple use
5.Dll is an In-Process Component whereas EXE is an OUt-Process Component.
6.You can create an objects of Dll but not of the EXE.


Thanks