Fully Qualified Name of an Assembly

This articles mentions the format of the Fully Qualified name of an assembly. This is basically required when SHarepoint solution refers the .Net dll from GAC.

Basically it is the prerequisite to convert .Net Aspx page into SharePoint Aspx page.

As Sharepoint does not have .cs or .vb files the reference of the dll is required.

In order to add the reference of the External or Internal dll in SHarepoint pages, the fully QUalified name of the dll is required to be specified in aspx or ascx page. Following is the sample format of the same:

Assembly Name="AssemblyName, Version=1.1.0.8831, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=99bc42d8b04fdb36"

The fully qualified name indicates that that assembly has
1) a strong name with a public key token,
2) has the culture value neutral,
3) and has a version number of 1.1.0.8831.

Its processor architecture is "msil", which means that it will be just-in-time (JIT)-compiled to 32-bit code or 64-bit code depending on the operating system and processor.

This is only for Strong Named assembly.

A strong name consists of the assembly's identity—its simple text name, version number, and culture information plus a public key and a digital signature.

It is generated from an assembly file using the corresponding private key.

Hope it helps to clear the concept of Fully Qualified Name...