Hi all,

I want to create an MDI app that allows reporting on XML data files
downloaded from the equipment that we manufacture, this MDI app will
have several default reports but due to the nature of the data different
people will want to see it in different ways.

What I would like to do is have several standard reports/graphing MDI
Children that come as standard, then allow the user to apply a plugin
that will allow them to view their own reports. We would create the
plugin for them based on their needs and this would give them exactly
what they want without bloating the application with needless extras.

I think, and I am probably way off here as I've never done this before,
that I could create a windows form, make it an MDI child and compile it
into a dll, this form would contain all the functionality to extract the
data and display it as the customer requires.

Is this right? if not what is the best way to achieve what I want?

How would I register the plugin, I assume a command in the host app, but
how would it store the info regarding the plugin, maybe in an xml config
file?

How do I know what functionality is available within the plugin? do I
need to use reflection?

Any advice, website links, books etc that you could recommend would be
greatly appreciated.

Many thanks

Joe

See this links:

Creating a Plug-In Framework
http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/community/authors/royosherove/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnaspp/html/pluginframework.asp

Search Dynamically for Plug-Ins
http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/community/authors/royosherove/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnaspp/html/searchforplugins.asp

--

Carlos J. Quintero

MZ-Tools 4.0: Productivity add-ins for Visual Studio .NET
You can code, design and document much faster.
http://www.mztools.com


"Joe_Black" <JoeBlack (AT) newsgroups (DOT) nospam> escribió en el mensaje
news:OVBTHXVJFHA.3528 (AT) tk2msftngp13 (DOT) phx.gbl...

Carlos J. Quintero [.NET MVP] wrote:
Thanks Carlos

Thats exactly what I am after.

Joe