Usage of Side-by-Side DLLs

This technique can be used when more than one version of a component needs to exist on a workstation and the two components are binary compatible.

In this case, one of the components can be placed in the same directory as the application, and a file created with the same name as the application executable, with an extension .LOCAL. Then the local component will be used by preference by this application (other applications will use the non-local component, or their own local components).

Because the same registry entries are used for both copies of the component, the components need to be binary compatible for this to work. Hence these registry entried components are given a shared count under properties.

This technique should be used only as a last option when the conflict management techniques does not resolve a problem.