plugin architecture

12 Apr 2006 7:36 PM

Craig Buchanan

I am building an application to help researcher record the outcomes of their
studies. These outcomes are document across a number of paper forms. The
information documented on these forms varies widely.

My current approach is to use a Document class with a collection of Question
classes. I create an instance of the Document, add a number of questions to
it, serialize the Document object to XML, then treat this XML file as a
'template'. I've created a number of these 'template' files. When I want
to use a specific template, I open the XML file, deserialize it, add data to
it, serialize it, then save the xml to a datasource associated w/ the study.

I started researching Plugsin and thought this architecture might provide a
more tight-bound solution. Essentially, each template is a plugin. The
sticking point is how to define and save a collection of Question classes
with the plugin.

I'd appreciate hearing others thoughts on these approaches.

Thanks,

Craig Buchanan

13 Apr 2006 1:15 PM

Spam Catcher

"Craig Buchanan" <some***@microsoft.com> wrote in
news:ePme3hmXGHA.4988@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl:

> I started researching Plugsin and thought this architecture might
> provide a more tight-bound solution. Essentially, each template is a
> plugin. The sticking point is how to define and save a collection of
> Question classes with the plugin.

How are you defining a question?

Does this include text, combo boxes, checkboxes, etc?

If this is the case - perhaps define a collection of IQuestions - then have
an abstract class implement IQuestion in your plugin.

plugin architecture - repost