NGWS SDK Documentation  

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Step 4: The Global Assembly Cache and Auto-QFE Policy

The global assembly cache stores assemblies that are meant to be used by several applications on the machine. All assemblies in the global cache must have shared names.

If an assembly was found via probing or through a codebase, and QFE policy has not been turned off, the AssemblyResolver looks in the global assembly cache to see if any QFE’s exist for that assembly. If there is a version of the assembly in the cache that has a higher build and/or revision number, this assembly will be returned instead of the one found by probing.

If no assembly was bound via probing or through a codebase, the AssemblyResolver will look in the global cache for an assembly that matches the criteria given in the AssemblyRef. If automatic QFE policy has not been turned off, the AssemblyResolver will take the match that has the higher build/revision number.

This policy of always looking for latest revision/build number in the global assembly cache, allows an administrator to put certain shared assemblies in a place that will affect all assembly bindings on the system. The most common scenario for this would be to apply a security fix to a well-known shared assembly.