What is real purpose of isolated storages in .Net?

Question

I have heard of the term isolated storage in .Net. What is it really and how far is that used? Does that storage not visible to user and can be consumed or written to by Assemblies (specific assembly or AppDomain which created it) only?

Answer 1

It is a set of standards and technologies that allow administrators to specify safe storage locations and for developers to use them without knowing exact locations.

They are used is many enterprise applications and in many desktop application (to store user data in safe locations, for example). One main use is in locations where .NET runs under medium trust, normally hosted .NET web applications (that share a server with many others) - these applications cannot write to most locations in the filesystem, but can use isolated storage.

These locations can be visible to users, and any App Domain so long as it is running with the correct permissions.

See Isolated Storage on MSDN, and the IsolatedStorage managed class (meaning that you can consume them in .NET).

Answer 2

Isolated storage is for applications with partial trust. The .NET framework prevents applications from mucking around with the rest of your file system or with other applications' isolated storage in this scenario.

The actual files are buried within the user's profile somewhere in the local data or application settings.