| 摘要 |
A mechanism is provided for dynamically rendering a component instance at run time. According to the invention, a rendering engine is provided for each type of component that can be rendered, and each engine is responsible for rendering all instances of that component type. When it comes time to render a component instance, the rendering engine associated with that instance is invoked. When invoked, the rendering engine receives a set of metadata associated with the component instance, which specifies the attribute values for that instance. Based upon the metadata, the rendering engine determines, at run time, a format for the instance, and renders the instance in accordance with the determined format. By rendering the instance at run time based purely upon metadata, the present invention makes it possible to store only the metadata associated with the instance. Unlike the prior art, it is not necessary to store a component as a large static entity. As a result, the present invention requires less storage. Rendering the component instance using metadata also simplifies the management and maintenance of the components. Rather than managing a large number of static entities, only the metadata associated with the components needs to be managed. In addition, the present invention significantly reduces code redundancy (since code is centralized to the rendering engine). Overall, dynamically rendering components in accordance with the present invention leads to greater system efficiency.
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