Development Environment Components

To create an application visual interface, forms and components are used.

The form designer includes the collection of components, which can be used to create custom dialog forms.

A component is an object that has the collection of properties, methods and events. A component can be visual or non-visual.

Visual components are used to create a basic visual form interface. Visual components are descendants of the IControl interface. This interface contains basic properties that are used to set up the view and the layout of components.
Non-visual components are used to access various repository objects, to create bars and menus or to implement various access dialog boxes. Non-visual components are displayed as a square with a component icon only in the form design mode. Non-visual components are descendants of the IComponent interface that is a basic for all components.

To set up most of component properties and events in the form design mode, use the object inspector.

Component properties determine its appearance (for visual components) and behavior.

Component events determine the system response to various user actions during their work with the form. Actions executed on occurrence of specific events are described in the procedures of the set format, that is, event handlers.

Component methods enable the user to generate specific events or execute various actions with a component or an object associated with the component.

A form also has a set of properties, methods and events.

Main operations that can be executed with components on form are described in the following subsections:

All components are grouped into the following categories:

Standard Components. It contains basic components of Windows applications.
Additional Components. It contains components necessary to make the created forms more attractive and up-to-date.
Data Access Components. It contains components necessary for working with repository objects.
Platform Components. It contains stylized components of Foresight Analytics Platform.