Echelon LNS Plug-in - Manual (Page 14)

• A simple out-of-process server task model that supports plug-ins in the .NET environment (LNS
plug-ins are out-of-process COM servers, for which support in the .NET environment is not well
documented).
The LNS .NET wrapper is the Primary Interop Assembly, which is generated by Echelon and
distributed with LNS. It provides a Run-time Callable Wrapper (RCW) that allows your .NET
plug-in to interface with the COM-based LNS API. Note that the LNS .NET wrapper is required for
plug-in development with .NET, but is not considered part of the LNS Plug-in Framework because it
may also be used by LNS applications that are not plug-ins. The LNS Primary Interop Assembly is
included with the LNS runtime components starting in LNS 3.23. If your plug-in is targeted for LNS
3.23 or later, you do not need to include the LNS 3.22 Primary Interop Assembly that is included
with the LNS Plug-in Developer’s Kit, version 1.1.
The LNS Plug-in Framework is implemented as a set of base classes that your plug-in will inherit and
extend. These classes are documented by the LNS Plug-in Framework Online Help. The use of
these classes is demonstrated in the Creating the Plug-in Source Files section in Chapter 2.
• PluginObjectBase. This class contains the basic framework implementation of the LNS Plug-in
API methods and properties.
• PluginServerBase. This class works in conjunction with PluginObjectBase. It contains the
process model handling for the out-of-process server.
• PluginFormBase. This class contains the base class for the optional user interface instantiation of
the plug-in. This may not be necessary in all plug-ins, since some plug-ins may not have user
interfaces.