Writing Mobile Code Essential Software Engineering for Building Mobile Applications [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

The Execution Engine

The .NET Compact Framework execution engine is the low-level code that deals with loading, JIT compiling, executing managed code, as well as managing memory. It gets to do all the grunt work that makes managed code work.

The execution engine is written in C/C++ and compiled down into the native processor's instruction set. Additionally, the execution engine has the burden of translating the .NET Compact Framework and end-user applications into an executable format at runtime. This is known as JIT compilation ("just-in-time" compilation). The execution engine also handles any transitions from managed code to native code, such as the calling of native code APIs in the underlying operating system; this is known as thunking.

Because the execution engine handles all the low-level interactions with the operating system, it takes on a large design and testing burden to ensure that it is as reliable as possible.