In a development environment a project is the high level container.

A project contains source files and references to other projects.

In the source files are descriptions to classes and methods that are compiled to make a run time assembly.

In the iWay .NET Technology Adapter, a target is the high level container. A target is a reference to a location where one or more Assemblies are located directly on the machine running iWay Integration Tools (iIT) with iWay Explorer.

Note: The .NET framework does not support prefixed device names, such as:

\\sharedrive\sharedirectory

This is the case even if the shared drive shows as a letter in the current Windows Explorer.

Upon opening a target, one or more Assemblies are displayed. This display behavior can be customized with individual folder profiles or one global profile. For more information, see Controlling the Adapter Behavior Using a Properties File.

An Assembly contains classes, which are grouping containers of similar objects that allow actions or methods to be performed on the objects. The usual term is the class exposes methods. Each method in the iWay explorer is exposed concatenated to the class that exposes the method. This is a different view of objects than that of a development environment, but very useful when the method must be used for performing an action. Depending on how the Assembly was programmed, the navigation tree of the assembly will be simple or complex.

When exploring a method, the inbound and outbound parameters that the method exposes will be displayed by name in the tree and by type in the detail pane of iWay Explorer. The .NET framework has a series of types called the Common Type System that defines a set of types that are used throughout the .NET framework. It is possible to define custom types made up of the common types or build structures from the common types.