The Nevron Open Vision (NOV) product line is integrated into a specific runtime/presentation layer via hosts, which are specific for each runtime/presentation layer. Currently provided are hosts for the following presentation layers of .NET:
The following image illustrates the host integration model that NOV uses:
On the left you see the Nevron Open Vision Core and Extenstion Portable Libraries, that is essentially a collection of portable class libraries (colored in green). The individual NOV products are implemented as portable class libraries that depend only on the NOV Core (Nevron.Nov.Presentation.dll). The NOV Core itself is a portable class library too, which does not have any direct dependencies on platform specific .dlls. In this way the Nevron Open Vision product line can virtually run everywhere from a single code base (and single .dll base).
In order for the NOV products to integrate into a specific environment, the NOV Core defines a set of integration services. These NOV Core only contains a definition of these services which get a platform specific implementation in the specific NOV hosts. In this way the primary role of a NOV host is to implement the NOV Core integration services.
On the right side you can see the current set of NOV hosts. They are colored in blue to highlight the fact that they are platform specific, and as such can provide a platform specific implementation of the NOV Core integration services. The process of letting the NOV Core know about the host and the respective integration services implementation is known as NOV Installation. The NOV Installation is described in the Hosting NOV in your Application topic.