Plug-in project extension points

When a plug-in wants to allow other plug-ins to extend or customize portions of its functionality, it will declare an extension point. The extension point declares a contract, typically a combination of XML markup and Java™ interfaces, that extensions must conform to. Plug-ins that want to connect to that extension point must implement that contract in their extension. The key attribute is that the plug-in being extended knows nothing about the plug-in that is connecting to it beyond the scope of that extension point contract. This allows plug-ins built by different individuals or companies to interact seamlessly, even without their knowing much about one another.

The com.ibm.hats.rcp.runtime.rcpApplications extension registers your ZIETrans rich client plug-in plug-in with the ZIETrans runtime. This is how the ZIETrans runtime knows which plug-ins are ZIETrans application plug-ins. The Applications view is populated based on plug-ins that implement this extension point. This extension point also indicates which view (by default, your transformation view) is opened when an instance of your application is launched.

The ZIETrans RCP project uses the Eclipse org.eclipse.ui.views extension to register the transformation view class in this plug-in with the Eclipse platform.