.NET Based Addin Framework

Building a software product which can meet the future needs of customers is always a challenging task. This is especially the case when the software enters into the enhancement / maintenance stage. At this stage, the team members who had originally created the software might have left the company, or they may be in other project teams. You will be lucky if you can find a team member who was originally in the development team to help you. If a programmer who is new to the product is involved in the enhancement of the product, then there is a greater chance that he will do some mistake and will break the existing functionality, which will be unidentified till it happens in the customer�s site. Worst is the case if the software is not designed well and proper documentation is not available. Also, the developmental cost of adding a new functionality to an existing product is also very high just because the entire system needs to be tested again and shipped as another version. This is where the Addin Project Framework wins. In my previous article, I had shown you how to write a plug-in framework with dynamic toolbars and menus in VC++, MFC, ATL, and COM. In this article, I will show you how to do the same thing using the .NET framework libraries. More...