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Simon Jeremy Hall

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A runtime activation system uses a set of policies designed to provide a balance between backwards compatibility and ease of migrating existing (non side-by-side aware) applications to new runtime versions. The system chooses the runtime version to activate when an application runs or when a runtime application programming interface is invoked based on the set of policies. The system implements these policies by consulting compatibility data associated with the application indicating the intent of the author and level of side-by-side support provided by the application and/or global configuration data. Based on the compatibility data, the system chooses policies that are right in the most common cases, and easy to modify in less common cases. Thus, the runtime activation system allows applications to be flexibly configured to handle new runtime versions in a manner determined by the application author, a system administrator, or others.

Runtime activation and version selection

The efficient use of type descriptors with frozen objects. A frozen object might actually include several type descriptors, a primary type descriptor that is canonical according to a set of canonicalization rules, and an auxiliary type descriptor that is not identical to the primary type descriptor. The auxiliary type descriptor may be used to access the canonical type descriptor. When performing an operation, if the auxiliary type descriptor can be used to perform the operation, then that auxiliary type descriptor may be used. If the canonical type descriptor is to be used to perform the operation, the auxiliary type descriptor is used to gain access to the canonical primary type descriptor. The primary type descriptor is then used to perform the operation.

Type descriptor management for frozen objects

Mechanisms that allow frameworks significant flexibility in varying the library of common base classes in a manner that better suits the domain of applications served by the framework. Instead of providing the base class library, the runtime provides a data contract for the data structure of each base class. The frameworks can then define each base class in a custom way so long as the data contract is honored. Thus, for example, the framework may provide custom framework-specific methods and/or properties as is appropriate for the framework. Another framework might define the base classes in a different way.

Flexible base class library

A host intercepts calls between two executables and determines whether the calls are permissible according to the host's security model which can be identify based, such as user identity based&#x2014;for instance, mapping access rights within a specific data base user context to database object access. Such an identity security model differs from a common language runtime security model where managed code uses Code Access Security to prevent managed assemblies from performing certain operations. Managed assemblies registered with the host are host objects from the host's perspective for which access rights can be defined via security rules, such as are defined for individual user identities. A host can decide access between managed executables based on the host's identity based access rules by trapping any cross assembly calls and deciding whether such calls should proceed or be blocked from taking place based on the corresponding identity security settings.

Cross assembly call interception

Dynamic call site binding includes determining, based on a context of a call received from a call site, a pointer to target code to be executed to carry out the call. A cache entry is generated, for use with subsequent calls from the call site, the cache entry associating the context of the call with the pointer to the target code. The cache entry is saved as being associated with the call site.

Dynamic call site binding

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