I have some public user defined classes with relations between their members and also several methods with specific and generic signatures.
I would like to be able to store and manipulate custom control flow over these classes (plus CLR classes) using basic control statements like if/then/else, foreach, do/while, variable assignments etc.
The custom control flow should be created at runtime and then stored for later use and manipulation. The idea is to have a data representation of the control flow, possibly in the form of a abstract syntax tree, with strongly typed syntax in order to be able to apply genetic operations. The resulting custom code has to be executed as part of another program.
1) What is the preferred code representation for manipulating genetic operations and then execute the code including my classes,
2) Which c# technologies should I use for the above problem? I know there are related technologies like reflection, the new c# 3.0 features (lambda, expression trees), CodeDom, DLR library, etc but which approach or combination is the most efficient.
3) Are there such paradigms or implementations available?
EDIT: The platform is supplied with data of defined c# custom types, both constant and time variable.
Every moment rules are applied to the data (basic conditions or more complicated functions) and it is decided to take some actions.
I would like to be able to:
Represent the rules on a tree or a graph and execute tha flow.
Create custom rule sets by the user via a UI toolkit
Make rearrangement on the tree or graph and apply GP operations
Reflection is the technology to inspect already generated types, methods, fields, etc., hence it'll probably not help you much for now.
Expression trees are rather interesting, but AFAIK they will not allow you to create complex program flow since a lambda expression cannot have a body, which would make it rather difficult to create anything moderately complex.
DLR is somewhat in the making. You will get the bits and pieces, but only the next .NET version will have baked-in support for the DLR. That could be an interesting alternative, by creating programs on the fly and executing them.
What you could do now is possibly emitting IL, either in a Dynamic Method or a dynamically generated assembly. All possible constructs should be available to you, but a subsequent manipulation is probably rather difficult.
Even so, there is one project that does quite a bit of IL magic and it may even be something that could be useful to you: LinFu. According to the list you have an implementation of Dynamic Object and can do stuff like dynamicObject.CreateDuck<InterfaceType>()
Another route which may be a bit heavy but also interesting is the WF (Workflow Foundation) Framework. Such workflows should be constructable by program and they may be interesting due to their continuation style working: You can persist a running workflow any time and pick it up just where you left it.
All traditional program structures should be available to you within WF.