It seems that there is still lot to learn about .NET Framework 3.5. I've found today (thanks to Daniel Moth) that is one more interesting feature was added in .NET Framework - Programming Model for Add-Ins. Basically, it allows you to build application that can be extended by add-ins. You may say that it is not a great task to build your own model. Yes, it is easy to. To build simple model. But what this new programming model offers is a complete solution. There are the following services that you can leverage:
- Independent Versioning. You may want your host app and add-ins to version independently.
- Discovery and Activation services
- Isolation Levels. You may want load your add-ins in separate application domain. Separate from a host app or in seperate app domain for each add-in. There are several levels of isolation you can choose from.
- Lifetime management. Because of the facility above (isolation Levels) you may be not able to rely on Garbage Collection. Fortunately, there are facilities to manage lifetime of objects in this programming model.
I would definitely recommend reading a bit about this on MSDN if you are building Smart Clients sometimes. There are also some good resources on Daniel's blog that will help you to start. By the way, Daniel calls this as Managed Add-ins Framework (Great name, except of usage of 'Framework' term, that is a bit overused already) Interesting, if that is official name of this feature (I did not find mentions of MAF in official docs)?