Metadata – Part I

As the intelligence of the human mind grows inleaps and bounds, so does the size of the English dictionary. And addto this, Microsoft?s new technologies always usher in a whole gamut ofnewer words and terms to the English dictionary. When Physics branchedon to metaphysics and allergy of metals came to be known as metallurgy,Mr. Bill Gates must have been inspired enough to want to add force tothe meta-series by introducing a word called metadata ! Virtualis already a byword in Microsoft?s technologies with virtual memory andthe Virtual Execution System of the .net framework, the more importantconcepts in the series. Whether or not Microsoft?s products caused anytremors in its rivals, it came out with another term called JIT-ters(Just In Time complier)! Extensible, reflection, namespaces,Intermediate Languages Specification, Conditional attribute,versioning, managed code, delegates, COM interoperability are just afew of the perplexing set of words for the pink-faced fresher! Thechoice, today, for the enthusiast is either to buy a new dictionary orto join a post-graduation course in English Literature or philosophy !

The platform for C# is a virtual platformcalled the .net framework. C# code is translated into an intermediatelanguage code by the C# compiler before it is finally compiled to a PE(Portable Executable) file by the JIT. The instructions left by the ILcode for the JIT (necessary to execute the source code) is calledMetadata.

Metadata consists of various technicalinformation about the types of data, methods and stack calls in your C#program which is used by the system loader when the VES executes yourC# program. There is no name mangling of method names in the PE file asin C++. All the method names are standard as in your original sourcecode and you can read the metadata in the PE file just like you wouldread in the text format ! Metadata is also important in enforcingsecurity i.e. managed code starts here, describing the loading classesinto memory and defining run-time parameters for your program for theloader.