How Is the Infinity Platform Extended and Customized?

Application Software Engineers, Custom Solution Developers, and IT Administrators use the same mechanism for extending and building applications on the Infinity platform. Infinity has an XML-based metadata catalog system using XML schema definitions to define various features/parts of an application. A catalog on the Infinity platform contains one or more related "specs" (catalog items). A catalog item is an XML document based on a schema that describes a particular pattern or entity available on the Infinity platform. The schemas wrap up most of the standards and tenets of the Infinity platform. The Infinity platform allows developers to load XML catalog items/specs into the platform. After they are loaded into the system, these specs are typically referred to as "features." The XML specs must conform to schemas defined in the platform or they cannot be loaded. Since the platform knows what elements to expect in any particular spec type when it is loaded, the platform knows how consume and render that spec type.