Loading and Unloading .Net assemblies

Two of the most common design patterns used for application extension are scripting and a plugin or adding framework. In this article I will explore the latter. PlugIn interfaces enables third party developers to extend your applications and in some instances create a new market place. Most plugin frameworks have the option to load plugins at runtime and on demand. This is great but sometimes it is necessary to unload the plugin for various reasons. The reasons an application may need to unload plugins are the following: the plugin is consuming to many resources or has not been invoked within some specified time. Loading an assembly in .Net is very easy to do and for the most part does not require much complexity in your plugin design but unloading a .Net assembly raises the complexity of your plugin design.

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