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Common (Microsoft) Intermediate Language

One of the biggest advantages that the runtime framework provides is a language-neutral execution environment. All code, irrespective of the source language, is compiled automatically into a standard intermediate language (IL) - either on command or when first executed (in the case of ASP.NET). The runtime framework then creates the final binary code that makes up the application and executes it. The compiled IL code is used for each request until the source code is changed, at which point the cached version is invalidated and discarded.