Pitney Bowes MapXtreme - Manual (Page 126)

Chapter 7: Desktop Applications, Controls, Dialogs, and Tools
MapInfo.Windows.Controls Namespace
MapXtreme v7.1 126 Developer Guide
.NET common language runtime (CLR) environment, making the COM object appear to .NET clients
as if it were a native .NET object and making the .NET client appear to the COM object just as if it
were a standard COM client.
You can create references to these COM object directly from Visual Studio for instance, and simply
interact with them just as you would with a .NET class. This allows you to build your .NET application
while talking to legacy COM objects and passing the results to MapXtreme .NET objects. Think of
the .NET application you are developing as an orchestration piece of your application framework. In
this way you can use the latest technologies available in the .NET framework and retain your
existing investment in legacy libraries. Because all data from the COM objects has been translated
to the .NET environment, passing these to other managed classes is allowed and causes no domain
issues.
Sample Applications and Project Templates
MapXtreme integrates into Visual Studio and comes with various sample applications and project
templates. The sample applications show different aspects of how to use our object model within the
.NET framework and Windows Forms applications. The templates are basic starting points for
application development.
The project templates that are part of Visual Studio allow you to create a starter project and
demonstrate a generalized application framework. From Visual Studio, create a new project by
selecting the MapForm Application template. This creates a basic single document interface (SDI)
application. See the sample desktop applications for a basic multiple document interface (MDI)
application and how best to integrate MapXtreme into this model.
The .NET Windows Forms development platform is basic in its approach and functionality. We
recommend using third-party tools that supplies a more complete UI development platform.
The Desktop sample applications that ship with MapXtreme are designed to show you specific tasks
with minimal overhead. Use these as learning tools instead of a starting point for production
application as these were not designed as application development examples.
The remainder of this chapter describes the wide variety of controls, dialogs and tools available for
building desktop applications.
MapInfo.Windows.Controls Namespace
The MapInfo.Windows.Controls namespace contains classes that implement controls in desktop
applications. The use of Windows controls is quite simple as you drop the desired controls onto your
form and use the various properties to configure them to your specifications. You will find that the
controls in this namespace are similar to controls found in the MapInfo.WebControls namespace.