Metadata specification in a dynamic geometry software

Abstract

© 2017 Author(s). Attributes in C# are a mechanism that provides association of declarative information with C# code such as classes, types, methods, properties, namespaces etc. Once defined and associated with a program entity, an attribute can be queried at run time. However, the attributes have certain restrictions which limit their application to representing complex metadata necessary for development of dynamic geometry software (DGS). We have devised a solution, independent of attributes, which was developed to overcome the limitations, while maintaining the functionality of attributes. Our solution covers a wide range of uses, from providing extensibility to a functional programming language and declaring new data types and operations, to being a foundation for runtime optimizations of expression tree evaluation, and helpful user interface features, such as code completion.