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Application Domains in .NET
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by Joydip Kanjilal
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Introduction

An Application Domain is a light-weight process.  It is a logical and physical unit of isolation built around every .NET application by the Common Language Runtime (CLR) and contains its own set of code, data and configuration settings.  Multiple application domains can exist simultaneously in the same process.  The default application domain is created when the Common Language Runtime is first loaded into a process.  From then on, the CLR loads an assembly implicitly into an Application Domain the first time it encounters and references a type in the MSIL code. Assemblies can also be created explicitly loaded in Application Domains.  This article discusses what Application Domains are and the differences between Application Domains and Processes.  It also discusses Default Domains and how Application Domains can be created, loaded and unloaded explicitly.

What is an Application Domain?

An Application Domain is a light weight process and provides a logical and physical isolation from another .NET application.  This ensures that the Applications can work independent and isolated of each other.  An Application Domain is created by the Common Language Runtime (CLR) and it ensures that if one Application Domain crashes or goes down, it does not in any way effect the functioning of another Application Domain.  Multiple .NET applications can be executed in one single process by loading these applications in separate Application Domains.  Several threads can be executing in a single application domain at any given time and a particular thread is not confined to a single application domain.  In other words, threads are free to cross application domain boundaries and a new thread is not created for each application domain.  The following are the benefits of Application Domains.

Isolation of code, data and configuration information of one application from another

A failure in one application will not affect the other

What are Runtime Hosts?

When we create an application in .NET, regardless of the type of the application (Console Applications, Windows applications, Web services, etc), it has to be hosted by a Win32 process.  This is because none of these are Win32 applications.  This process is what we call the Runtime Host.  The following are the runtime hosts shipped with .NET Framework: ASP.NET, IE and Shell.  It is also possible to write our own Runtime host using some Microsoft APIs.

Application Domains and Processes

Every application has a process space in which it is executed.  This provides isolation between processes that ensures that code in one process does not have direct access to the code in another process.  An application domain is lighter than a process and therefore, it is referred to as a light weight process.  Application domains are appropriate for scenarios that require isolation without the heavy cost associated with running an application within a process.  In other words, an Application domain provides a secure and versatile unit of processing that the common language runtime can use to provide isolation between applications running in the managed environment of Microsoft .NET.  It should be noted here that applications that run on different Application Domains can only share information by using Microsoft .NET's Remoting technology.  A process is the running instance of a program and is characterized by a change of state and attributes and identified by having a Process Control Block of its own.  A process runs exactly one application and has its own virtual address space, executable code and data.  Like an Application Domain, a process is not permitted to access the code or data of another process.  The exact behavior of a particular process is based on the operating system on which it executes.  Multiple applications can execute within a single process by loading them into separate application domains.

Default Domains

A default domain is an application domain that gets loaded whenever the CLR is loaded and is not unloaded until the process terminates.

Creating an Application Domain

The AppDomain class abstracts application domains.  An Application domain can be created using AppDomain class of System namespace, but in most cases they are created and managed by the runtime hosts that execute the application's code.  An Application Domain is created using one of the following overloaded CreateDomain methods of the System.AppDomain class.

Listing 1

public static AppDomain CreateDomain(String appDomainName)
public static AppDomain CreateDomain(String appDomainName, Evidence securityInformation)
public static AppDomain CreateDomain(String appDomainName, 
   Evidence securityInformation, AppDomainSetup appDomainSetupInformation)
public static AppDomain CreateDomain(String name, 
   Evidence securityInformation, String appBasePath, String appRelativeSearchPath,
   bool shadowCopyFiles)

All these overloaded methods are static in nature and can be invoked without instantiating the class.  The first overloaded method accepts the name of the Application Domain to be created and creates an Application Domain.  However, the second accepts two parameters; the first one being the name of the Application Domain to be created while the second is a reference of the System.Security.Policy.Evidence for specifying the security policy for the application.  The third overload accepts an additional parameter, a reference of System.AppDomainSetup, which is used to configure how the assemblies would be loaded into the application.  The Evidence parameter refers to a collection of the security information on the application domain.  The last overloaded CreateDomain method accepts some additional parameters without defining a System.AppDomainSetup object reference.  The return value of each of these overloaded methods is an AppDomain object that represents the newly created application domain.

Configuring Application Domains

The properties ApplicationBase and ConfigurationFile belonging to the The AppDomainSetup class provide the control on how assemblies are loaded into an application domain.  While the former defines the root directory for an application, the latter is concerned with defining the XML file that contains the configuration settings related to versioning information and policies for the application that executes in the application domain.  Refer to the third overloaded CreateDomain method shown earlier to understand how to create an Application Domain and provide the configuration information.  The following is the property that is used to retrieve the configuration information from an Application Domain.

Listing 2

public AppDomainSetup SetupInformation { get; }
Executing an Application in a Remote Application Domain

The ExecuteAssembly method of the AppDomain class belonging to the System namespace is used to execute an assembly in an Application Domain.  The following are the overloaded versions of the ExecuteAssembly method.

Listing 3

public int ExecuteAssembly(String assemblyFile, Evidence assemblySecurity, String[] args)
public int ExecuteAssembly(String assemblyFile, Evidence assemblySecurity)
public int ExecuteAssembly(String assemblyFile)

The following is the source code given to illustrate how we can execute a remote assembly in an Application Domain.

Listing 4

using System;
using System.Runtime.Remoting;
using System.Reflection;
public class ExecuteAssemblyApplication
{
 public static void Main( String[] args )
 {
  AppDomain appDomain = AppDomain.CreateDomain("RemoteDomain");
  appDomain.ExecuteAssembly(@"C:\Test.exe");
  appDomain. CreateInstanceFrom(@"C:\Test.exe", " ExecuteAssembly.Test");
  //Some code
  AppDomain.Unload(appDomain);
 }
 }
}

The following is the source code for the Welcome class of the Welcome.exe assembly that has been used in the previous listing.

Listing 5

using System;
using System.Threading;
namespace ExecuteAssembly
{
 public class Test
 {
  public static void Main(String[] args)
  {
   Console.WriteLine("Application Domain: " + Thread.GetDomain().Name);
  }
 }
}
Loading an Assembly in an Application Domain

The Load method of the System.AppDomain class can be used to Load an assembly in an Application Domain provided the Application Domain concerned is not the current Application Domain and the necessary configuration settings for the two Application Domains are not the same.  The System.AppDomain provides the following methods for loading an assembly into an application domain.

Listing 6

public Assembly Load(AssemblyName assemblyReference)
public Assembly Load(AssemblyName assemblyReference, Evidence evidence)
public Assembly Load(AssemblyName assemblyReference, Evidence evidence, String callerLocation)
public Assembly Load(byte[] assembly)
public Assembly Load(byte[] assembly, byte[] assemblyStore)
public Assembly Load(byte[] assembly, byte[] assemblyStore, Evidence evidence)
public Assembly Load(String assemblyName)
public Assembly Load(String assemblyName, Evidence evidence)
public Assembly Load(String assemblyName, Evidence evidence, String callerLocation)
Unloading an Assembly from an Application Domain

The Common Language Runtime has no support to unload an assembly.  We can only unload the Application Domain in which the assembly has been loaded.  This is discussed in the following section.

Unloading an Application Domain

The Unload method shuts down an Application Domain.  The Garbage Collector does a full garbage collection when it unloads an App Domain, so the resources that have been used in an App Domain should be reclaimed when it is unloaded.  The following static method of the System.AppDomain class is used to unload an Application Domain.

Listing 7

public static void Unload(AppDomain domain)

This method accepts an AppDomain object that represents the Application Domain to be unloaded.  Note that if the thread on which the Unload method is called is executing in the domain to be unloaded, another thread is started with a view to perform this unload operation.

References
Conclusion

Application Domains are a unit of abstraction between threads and processes.  They provide isolation and security boundaries for executing managed code in .NET's managed environment.  It is possible to have multiple Application Domains in a process and multiple threads running in an Application Domain, but every application will only reside in its Application Domain.  Each ASP.NET application will run in its own application domain, but under the same worker process of ASP.NET called aspnet_wp.exe.  It should be noted that the ASP.NET Worker Process is aspnet_wp.exe in IIS 5.0 or w3wp.exe in IIS 6.0 versions.  Therefore, we may state that there lies a one-to-one correlation between application domains and threads. This article has provided a detailed insight into the concepts of Application Domains and how they can be used programmatically in Microsoft .NET's managed environment.


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