The Visual Basic 7.0 language enables the programmer to specify declarative information about entities defined in the program. For example, decorating a method in a class with the modifiers Public
, Protected Friend, Protected
, Friend
, or Private
specifies its accessibility.
Visual Basic 7.0 also enables programmers to invent new kinds of declarative information and to specify them for various program entities. For instance, a framework might define a HelpContext
attribute that can be placed on program elements such as classes and methods to provide a mapping from program elements to documentation.
New kinds of declarative information are defined through the declaration of attribute classes, which may have positional parameters and data member/property initializers. The new declarative information is specified on entities through attribute sections. Individual attributes specified on declarations may be retrieved at runtime through the NGWS Runtime reflection. Reflection is a set of classes that provides users access to the descriptions of classes.