Common Language Infrastructure

The Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) is developed by Microsoft and is standardized by ISO and ECMA which helps in running high level language application programs in different computer systems. The CLI allows multiple high-level languages to be used on different platforms without being writing again for the application. The CLI has four aspects which are as follows:-

• CTS (Common Type System) - The set of data types and operations which are shared by all the CTS-compliant programming languages.
• Meta data - It describes all those classes and class members which are defined in the assembly, and those classes and class members which are in the current assembly and will be called from the another assembly. 
• CLS (Common Language specification) - The set of basic rules for any language which is targeting the CLI should conform to interoperate with other CLS-compliant languages. 
• VES (Virtual Execution System) - The VES will load and execute CLI-compatible programs using the metadata to combine with the separated executed pieces of code at runtime.