A system and method for discovering the design time attributes of a
component are provided. The invention includes a type descriptor that can
access metadata associated with a component and report the metadata to a
development tool. The invention further includes a custom type descriptor
interface that can be implemented on a component in order to dynamically
provide information regarding the component to the type descriptor. The
invention further includes a type descriptor filter service interface
that can be implemented by the development tool to facilitate filtering
of design time information regarding components in order to simulate a
run time environment. The invention further comprises methodologies and
tools for facilitating application development.