In many cases we might like to extend the collection classes provided by the framework. Maybe we need to ensure that only objects of certain types are stored in the collection or we need a different sorting algorithm. Either way, custom collection classes will de-/serialize properly as long as they implement IEnumerable or ICollection and, of course, we supply enough information about the types stored inside the collection. Keep in mind that only the items that can be accessed through the interfaces are serialized, public properties and fields are not, unless they return a class that itself implements ICollection. There is another caveat when you implement your own container classes: The implementation of the XmlSerializer requires the collection to have a default accessor, even though ICollection does not require it. In VB.Net a default accessor is implemented as an Item property with a single parameter of type Integer. In C# it is implemented as an indexer. The syntax for an indexer resembles a read-only property, but it uses the square brackets around the parameter.
These collection classes are internally used by the component.
In .Net 2.x (Whidbey) the System.Collections namespace will support templated strong-typed collections. We may improve this part of the component to use that mechanism.

namespace DvtkData.Collections

Namespace DvtkData.Collections

namespace DvtkData.Collections