The iWay .NET Technology Adapter uses the classes in the Reflection namespace of the.NET class libraries. These classes enable loading an Assembly, and obtaining information from the loaded Assembly about the classes, methods, interfaces, and data types of the Assembly. This information from Reflection will be used to create XML schemas. At runtime, an instance of the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) will be instantiated to execute the selected method or methods in the Assembly.

Unlike static compiled code, dynamic code does not have access to all the field values stored in the Assembly, only the types and methods obtained from the Reflection API.

The Reflection API requires that the classes or methods be Serializable and that the member to be introspected be public. Private methods are always skipped and returned as private with no body.

Terminology Used With the iWay .NET Technology Adapter

The terms in this section are used with reference to the ECMA international and Microsoft documentation on the C# and Visual Basic languages, and to the Common language infrastructure. For more information on the languages and runtime of .NET, refer to these sources.

• Accessibility Domain. A defined text placed before each class, member or variable, defining the visibility and usage. Public methods can be inspected, Private are hidden, and so on. Refer to the language specific documentation for the proper syntax to use for the method to be invoked.
• Application Domain. A container for the types and class libraries used in a particular application. For the use of the .NET adapter, libraries can be loaded from different application domains but the adapter itself does not use an application domain.
• Assembly. A configuration of code and resources created by a complier to implement functionality.
• Class. A class is a container object that logically organizes data, functions, or combinations. A class physically is a location in memory, it is a pass by reference object, containing fields, methods, properties, and so on. A class can be instantiated by a constructor.
• Class Library. An Assembly that contains code that can be used by other Assemblies, often contained in an Assembly.
• Common Type System. The underlying type system that unifies the representation and storage of objects and data across languages within .NET.
• Constant. Text values embedded in a class or member.
• Constructor. A class member that can be used to create a new instance of the class.
• Field. A data holding member of a class or structure.
• Method. A member of a class that performs an operation on an object type.
• Object. A location in memory that has been created by a template, either class or structure or other.
• Program. Defined here a stand alone, portable execution format executable for the .NET framework.
• Property. A data holding member of a class or structure that can queried or set.

For a complete list of development sections of .NET, see the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 Development Guide and the Framework Design Guides for best practices.

For the adapter, it is a recommended practice that multiple application domains referencing the same types should not be loaded at the same time. The application domain boundary is at the Assembly level.

Do not use any class types that attempt to use Application environment variables. They will return the iway_home directory and not the expected Assembly. All Assembly environment variables function as documented.

The following objects are introspected dynamically:

• Assembly. Retrieves the information on the Assembly and the classes in the Assembly. The Assembly scope is the highest level of adapter application support.
• Classes. Retrieves the public methods of each public class.
• Method. Retrieves the name, parameters and the return type.
• Field. Retrieves the information on fields defined in methods and classes.
• Parameter. Retrieves the information on parameters such as type, in, out, or required.

The iWay .NET Technology Adapter supports only .NET Assemblies or .NET class libraries as target destination types. PE format executables are not acceptable as input and will return an error message.

Only classes and methods with accessibility domain of public will be available through the adapter. The adapter will accept default and overloaded constructors, provided the .NET runtime libraries are available.

Constant or other text defined in classes is usually not returned after introspection, so explicit variables that accept input must be defined. The .NET using clause, combined with a type variable, is often not returned, declare an explicit type instead.

class foo
{
foo(){
}
}
Overloaded
class foo
{
foo(string s){
s = new string(' ',5);
}
}

static class sfoo
{
string getfooName() {
string s = "thefoo";
return s;
}
}