What Is a Catalog?

A catalog is an assembly that contains embedded catalog items as resources. The application install copies the built-in catalog assemblies into the deploy\bin directory on the application server. During run-time, the Infinity platform scans the deploy\bin directory to determine the list of available catalog items for the application. As a result, an administrator of the application can copy additional catalog assemblies after install to make catalog items available to the application and allow for great flexibility in customizing an application on the Infinity platform. The Infinity platform also looks for individual catalog items (XML documents) in the deploy\bin directory in addition to the catalog assemblies.

Even though a catalog item is available as a result of deployment, Infinity does not create the features and entities associated with the catalog item until it is loaded into the database.