Attribute Developers can add metadata to their code through attributes. There are two types of attributes, custom and pseudo custom attributes, and to the developer these have the same syntax. Attributes in code are messages to the compiler to generate metadata. In CIL, metadata such as inheritance modifiers, scope modifiers, and almost anything that isn't either opcodes or streams, are also referred to as attributes. A custom attribute is a regular class that inherits from the Attribute class. Custom attributes are used by the .NET Framework extensively. Windows Communication Framework uses attributes to define service contracts, ASP.NET uses these to expose methods as web services, LINQ to SQL uses them to define the mapping of classes to the underlying relational schema, Visual Studio uses them to group together properties of an object, the class developer indicates the category for the object's class by applying the [Category] custom attribute. Custom attributes are interpreted by application code and not the CLR.When the compiler sees a custom attribute it will generate custom metadata that is not recognised by the CLR. The developer has to provide code to read the metadata and act on it. :thumbsup:
-ambarish-
