Plug-in? Add-in? Module?

[GillBates]

First of all, this is my first post here and I couldn't find a place where it could fit correctly so I apologize in advance if it seems out of place.

I'm developing an application that is very data-centric. It will (hopefully) be distributed to many end users (stores) that are very similar but are still independent of each other so they may have slightly varying reporting needs (must be within the app-can't have the data capture and reporting be separate), what I need is to find a way to be able to address their individual needs while keeping a central platform that is the same for everyone so it can keep evolving (think maintenance, service pack or whatever you want to call it).
My thinking so far has gotten me to want it to work something like the plugin system that winamp 2 had, where it had a directory where the dll's "lived" and the app would pick them up and "detect" what it could do with them. I would like to know if anyone has any insight into how I could make this work, I've been trying to find something that points me in the right direction, but I think what's stopping me the most is that I can't find the word/phrase that expresses what I want to do properly so search engines can send me on the correct path of enlightenment.

I'm hoping you guys can.
Thanks in advance!

 

[jmcilhinney]

Go to www.codeproject.com and search for "plugin architecture" (without quotes).

 

[Don Delegate]

See also Writing Plugin-Based Applications in .NET and Creating a Plug-In FrameWork (C# and ASP.NET, but the principles are the same).

Very interesting stuff: Lightweight Containers and Plugin Architectures, especially the link to Martin Fowler's Inversion of Control Containers and the Dependency Injection pattern

 

[GillBates]

Thank you for your help so far; I'll have to read up on this, but so far it looks very promising and it seems to cover what I need very nicely.