CLR vs Runtime vs Host

Question

Here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/zaf1h1h5(v=VS.90).aspx says:

In the .NET Framework version 2.0, the CLR provides hosting management interfaces for managing many of the features of a hosted runtime environment, allows the host application to implement other management interfaces provided by the runtime environment, and allows you to implement your own hosting management interfaces.

For detection purposes, management interfaces fall into two broad categories:

Management interfaces that the host implements and the runtime discovers through the IHostControl interface.

Management interfaces that the CLR provides and the host discovers through the ICLRControl interface.

Can you explain what these bold words are?

Thanks.

Answer 1

The CLR is the Common Language Runtime , an environment in which all dotnet applications run.
A host (in this context) is an unchanged application that hosts the CLR under it so that managed code can be run in its context (for example, SQL Server, IIS, etc.). The home page of the link you provided explains this.

Runtime moves to the CLR.

Update
Check out this MSDNMag article for a detailed overview of the CLR hosting APIs.