What is the real purpose of isolated storage in .Net?

Question

I have heard about isolated storage terms in .Net. What is it really and how far is it used? Does this store mean invisible to the user and can be used or recorded only using assemblies (only for the specific assembly or AppDomain that created it)?

Answer 1

This is a set of standards and technologies that allow administrators to define secure storage locations and for developers to use them without knowing the exact locations.

They are used in many enterprise applications and in many desktop applications (for example, for storing user data in safe places). One of the main uses — in places where .NET runs under average trust, typically hosted .NET web applications (which use a server with many others) —these applications cannot write to most places on the file system, but can use isolated storage.

These locations can be visible to users and any application domain if they work with the correct permissions.

See Isolated Storage on MSDN and IsolatedStorage (which means you can use them in .NET).

Answer 2

Sandbox storage is for partial trust applications. The .NET framework prevents applications from uninstalling with the rest of the file system or the isolated storage of other applications in this scenario.

Actual files are placed in the user profile somewhere in the local data or application settings.

Answer 3

Isolated storage can be thought of as a small application file system in which an application can save files.

Sandbox storage is available for partial trust applications and Silverlight applications. These applications do not have write permissions elsewhere in the file system, but with isolated storage they can save settings and user settings in a permanent location.

Each application receives its own isolated storage, and applications running in partial trust cannot look at another application storage. Isolated storage can be viewed in a regular file explorer.

I think external partial trust applications rarely use isolated storage, but for partial trust applications and Silverlight applications, isolated storage is the preferred option.