AIF Object Model

In Visual Studio development, automation and extensibility refer to the ability to programmatically automate repetitive tasks and extend the integrated development environment (IDE) with tools such as add-ins and wizards. The primary purpose of CCF is to provide UI integration that supports agent workflows (or automations). CCF provides UI-level automation; it does not require access to application source code. However, it does use an object model that is based on the Visual Studio automation object model.

CCF uses the MMC automation object model architecture for snap-in and extensions. You can also use the MMC 2.0 automation object model if you do not want to write snap-ins or extensions, but you would like to write programs that interact with MMC. In addition to supporting C/C++ and Visual Basic, MMC 2.0 automation objects are accessible from any macro language or programming tool that uses automations.

For more information about the automation object model and extensibility, see the discussion on MSDN, at https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa815049(VS.85).aspx and at https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xc52cke4(VS.80).aspx .

In addition to the automation object model, CCF uses the document object model (DOM), which is a W3C specification that describes the structure of dynamic HTML and XML documents so that they can be manipulated through a Web browser.