Guidelines for Creating Custom Application Prototypes

In Application Designer, you can create custom application prototypes from configured applications and endpoints on the application diagram. These custom prototypes can be used to define new applications and endpoints and are added to the Toolbox automatically.

Considerations for Creating Application Prototypes

When creating a custom prototype, the following considerations apply:

  • A custom prototype might include Web service provider endpoints created from WSDL or .disco files.

    Such endpoints contain predefined operation signatures based on the WSDL file. Typically, once an ASP.NET application with such an endpoint is implemented, the application project includes additional class files containing definitions of any complex XML types supporting serialization that are referenced by these operations. However, when implementing an application created from a custom prototype that includes such an endpoint, these additional class files are not included. For more information, see Overview of ASP.NET Applications on Application Diagrams.

  • When choosing a custom template for a custom application prototype that you plan to distribute, set the template property to a relative path from the "Microsoft Visual Studio\8\Common7\IDE\" directory, without the leading backslash (\), instead of the absolute path. For more information, see Project Templates for Applications on Application Diagrams.

Guidelines for Creating Custom Application Prototypes

When creating a custom prototype, the following guidelines apply:

  • A custom application prototype can include one or more applications or endpoints.

  • A custom application prototype that includes an application also includes its endpoints.

  • A custom application prototype that includes connected applications includes their connections.

  • A custom application prototype that is created from endpoints can be used to create endpoints only on a compatible application.

  • A custom application prototype that is created from multiple endpoints must be created from endpoints on the same application.

  • A custom application prototype cannot be created from an incompatible mix of endpoints and applications.

See Also

Tasks

How to: Create Custom Prototypes from Configured Applications and Endpoints

Other Resources

Extending Distributed System Designers