Those of you interested in software factories should check out the new Blueprints Manger and Sample Blueprint which were released on the Blueprints Codeplex site right after PDC 2008. Jack Greenfield and Michael Lehman hosted the ‘Blueprint booth’ at PDC 2008 where they demoed this latest release. Blueprints represent the next generation Software Factories and solve many of the authoring and deploying issues that we have experienced with GAT/GAX based software factories. In addition, they add some great features (some of them demonstrated in the Sample Blueprint) to the factory space like :

• Multiple interacting Blueprints
• Blueprint Composition
• RSS based updates
• WF-Process structured workflow
• WF-Commands - workflows which can automation developer tasks within Visual Studio
• Custom Menu Filters - allowing menus to appear when the conditions are right
• Code generation using the T4 Template system
• Custom extensions - assemblies which can interact with the user and Visual Studio

Details on Blueprints can be found in the ‘Introduction to Microsoft Blueprints’ paper (link currently broken but will be fixed soon!) that can be downloaded from the Blueprints homepage on MSDN.

More information, samples, screencasts on factory authoring, planning, etc. will be available in the coming period so you better make sure to get back to the Blueprints home on Codeplex reguarly! (expect some info on this blog too ;))

Last week at PDC 2008, OSLO was announced as the new platform for model driven development. OSLO is composed of a language called ‘M’, a tool called ‘Quadrant’ and a repository. After the announcement of OSLO I spoke to several people asking me my opinion about the difference and/or overlap between OSLO and the Microsoft DSL Tools, which is the current toolset for building visual DSL’s. Obviously, at that moment wasn’t very clear for a lot of people including me. After some more discussing and thinking I have things more clear:

In the session of Douglas Purdy and Vijaye Raji, called ‘A lap about OSLO’, Douglas mentioned three types of modeling (models). First, we have ‘drawings’ which are primarily used to communicate with others. Perfect tools for creating drawings are whiteboard or tools like Visio. Second, we have ‘Model Assisted’ models which are used to understand or manipulate code (or other artifacts). Last, we have ‘model driven’ where models are directly executed by a runtime and drive runtime behavior of applications.

Obviously, OSLO is all about ‘Model Driven’ and driving runtime behavior. When looking at the new Team Architect (UML) diagrams in VS 2010 CTP we can see that DSL Tools fit perfectly in the ‘Model Assisted’ world. All new diagrams in Team Architect are build on the DSL Tools and especially in combination with (future) technology, often referred to as ‘designer bus’, DSL Tools are very powerful in scenarios where artifact generation is involved.

So, currently each platform supports a different approach. Possibly there are some overlaps and only Microsoft can tell how both platforms evolve, coexists and/or eventually (partially) integrate?

In the meantime, I will start experimenting with OSLO and definitely continue to work with the DSL Tools to get the best of both worlds!

Christian Weyer just announced that he decided to open up development of his very successful Web Service Contract First (WSCF) tool. The new release, named WSCF.blue, targets WCF and can be found on CodePlex. Currently, Buddhike and Benjamin are on the team and as the designated project leader I invite everybody interested in web Services and Contract First to help us further improve this tool.

If you are interested, contact me and I will be happy to add you to our team!

Service Factory Contrib Project is live! Yesterday, Don Smith published the site that will (hopefully) soon host a lot of community extensions for Service Factory. Hernan de Lahitte already contributed the long waited for "Import from WSDL" feature and I donated a version of Service Factory that includes VB.NET code generation from your models.

I will upload some other extensions in the coming days but for now, if you have anything to share, please read all about p&p contrib projects, follow the sign up process and we will make sure you can publish your contribution soon.

For those of you who have been wondering what is happening with Software Factories lately, have a look (and subscribe) at the new team blog for Software Factories. In this post, Jack Greenfield outlines the plans the team has to move the Software Factory Initiative forward. Also Jezz announced to be back and promised to post a bit more (I really should do the same...).

So, great news for everybody interested in adopting Software Factories! (in the 'near' future)

I just received an email of somebody who got stuck trying to follow the steps I described in this previous post. In this post I explained how to write a "VSServiceManager" (ExampleLanguageDesignerServiceManager) and register it in the Software Factory Schema file. However, when trying this example in the Rosario April CTP you will notice that the "Software Factory Runtime" dlls are no longer there (no further comments on that...). The good news is that Backplane is still available and we can also register our VSServiceManager with Backplane by adding the following snippet to the "Backplane.config" file (PrivateAssemblies folder).

I got a few other backplane related questions so I decided to clean up some of my experimental code and make that available for download (together with a few posts to provide some more details). Expect something in the coming days?!

In a previous post I quickly mentioned the conceptual "Designer Bus" which is currently represented by "Backplane" in the Microsoft.VisualStudio.ToolIntegration.Backplane.dll" assembly. I stated we can use Backplane to "maintain" all kind of references between objects, model elements, designers, tool windows, etc. In this post we will dive a little deeper to see how we can use Backplane to get a reference to a  model element in a Domain Specific Language.

Anyone familiar with Domain Specific Languages (DSl Tools) probably also heard of the Designer Integration Powertoy (DIS). DIS can be used to create (and resolve) references between model elements withing or accross languages. Unfortunately the solution that DIS is offering is pretty limited. Hopefully Backplane will do a better job!

Here is high level overview of the steps I took to "investigate" this.

First I used the Microsoft DSL Tools to created a simple Domain Specific Language called "ExampleLanguage" which is based on the "Minimal Language" template. As you can see in the screenshot below this is really simple DSL but enough for this test. 

 Second, I created a class called "ExampleLanguageDesignerServiceManager" that inherits from "VSServiceManager" (Microsoft.VisualStudio.ToolIntegration.Backplane.VSHost.dll). Below you can see what this class looks like. 

(note: "ReferencedDataContracts" and "ServiceContract" have nothing to do with the concepts we know from for example WCF)

The only important thing to remember from this class (for now) is the "CreateService" method that returns a "ExampleLanguageDesignerService" that is displayed below. This class inherits from VSService (Microsoft.VisualStudio.ToolIntegration.Backplane.VSHost.dll) and basically wraps my "ExampleLanguage" DSL. For example, you can see it has a (private) property for the "Diagram", "DocData" and "ExampleModel" which is the root of my DSL. (It does have a lot more butI skipped that in this screenshot.) 

 An interesting method in the "ExampleLanguageDesignerService" class is the "GetExampleModelElements" method which returns a ReadOnlyCollection of "ReferencedExampleElement". As you can see in the screenshot of the DSL defintion above, "ReferencedExampleElement" isn't part of the "ExampleLanguage" DSL so, where does this come from?

Backplane introduces the "ReferencedObject" class (Microsoft.VisualStudio.ToolIntegration.Backplane.dll) that represents an object with the capability of "being referrenced". One of the properties of "ReferencedObject" is "Reference" that holds the "location" where Backplane can find the object. What I did is, I created a "ReferencedExampleElement" class (screenshot below) that inherits from "ReferencedObject" and "wraps" the "ExampleElement" class from the DSL. The "GetExampleModelElements" method in the "ExampleLanguageDesignerService" loops through all elements in the DSL, wraps them in a "ReferencedExampleElement", adds them to a collection and returns the collection.  

 (Note: anyone interested in the source code that is needed to actually implement the above mentioned classes, have a look at "Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamArchitect.LogicaClassDesigner.ToolAdapter.dll". This assembly contains similar classes that will help you understand the details.)

The next thing I did is I made sure the above mentioned classes get loaded by Visual Studio. To do this I included the above mentioned "ExampleLanguageDesignerManager" in one of my test factories called  "MyFirstRosarioFactory". The screenshot below shows the Software Factory Schema for this factory.

 As we can see I defined the "ExampleLanguage" viewpoint and registered the "ExampleLanguageDesignerManager" which ensures at some point it gets loaded by the "Software Factory Runtime". In the following code example (that I implemented in a command in my factory) we can see I am using Backplane to get a reference to the "ExampleLanguageDesignerServiceManager". After that we can use the "ExampleLanguageDesignerServiceManager" to create an instance of the "ExampleLanguageDesignerService". Then we can use the "ExampleLanguageDesignerService" to get all elements (ReferencedExampleElement) from a specific dsl model (without using DIS!)

 (note: some code is missing in the above screenshot. for example, we have to define a "scope" to define the solution, project, item, etc. where we are interacting with) 

I already mentioned my "ReferencedExampleElement" class inherits from the "ReferencedObject" class implemented in Backplane. This "ReferencedObject" object has a property called "Reference". When running the above code in debug mode I can see that the "Reference" property of "MyElement" (code snippet above) has a value of

"backplane://C:\\Dev\\MyFirstFactory\\MyFirstRosarioFactory1.pdef/MyCompany.ExampleLanguageToolAdapter.ExampleLanguageDesignerServiceManager/9d375fb7-bccd-4d03-a6ec-20340517d360\\MyModel.mydsl/6568ccec-604f-40c3-b143-9962a0901807""

 

The cool thing of Backplane is that once we know the "Reference" of an object we can ask Backplane to resolve it for us with code that looks like:

To be continued...

In a previous post we mentioned the existence of a "Software Factory Schema" file for an installed factory in our Rosario CTP. We now know, at some point, a "Factory" instance is created from this file that holds all the information that is stored in this schema file. Let's have another look at the software factory schema file of Service Factory to see if we can learn something more from this.  

One of the things to notice in this schema file is a viewpoint that is called "ServiceRootViewPoint". This viewpoint is the so called "root viewpoint" for this software factory. We can also see that there is another viewpoint within this root viewpoint that is called "ServiceContractDesignerViewpoint". As we can see, the root viewpoint holds a "Command" (ServiceRootCreationCommand) that contains a "CommandType" and a "CommandImplementationType. In this case both are implemented in the "Microsoft.Practices.ServiceFactory.Commands.dll" that we can find in the "InstallDir" (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies) of this factory.

So, where do we need this CommandType and CommandImplementationType for? In a previous post, we have seen that when we executed the "CreateProduct" in the Application Explorer  

it popped up a dialog where we could select the software factory where wanted to create a product from. 

When we select a software factory in this window and hit OK, the ApplicationExplorer (and some helpers) retrieves the root viewpoint of the software factory and finds the Command that is associated with this. At that point the Command,implemented as a "FactoryCommand" is transformed into a more general "Command" that is implemented in "Microsoft.VisualStudio.ToolIntegration.Backplane.dll".

This is actually *very* interesting because this assembly implements a concept that is sometimes referred to as the "DesignerBus" (it is called Backplane at this moment) which hopefully makes it possible to, for example, implement references between models, references between models and designers, toolwindows, get a reference to a Service in VS.NET,etc.  It can actually be used to glue everything together ;) Anyone familiar with the DSL Tools knows that at this moment we only have DIS to create references between models and only in a very limited way. Maybe Backplane can help here! (More on this very exiting stuff in another post).

Let's continue with our Command... After the FactoryCommand is "converted" into a general command it gets executed. Below we can see a code snippet from the "Execute" method of the "ServiceRootCreateCommandImplementation" from the root viewpoint of Service Factory. The code might look funny to you but this is just because it is produced by reflector and not by me ;) You can see that "Backplane" is used here to get a reference to the "RecipeManager" and "DTE". Perfect! 

What we can also see is that basically all that happens here is, get a reference to the a Guidance Package and unfold a template (model.vstempate) to set the initial structure of our Service Factory solution. Please note that "model.vstemplate" is just a normal  .vstemplate that is located in the source tree of Service Factory (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Service Factory V3). This means, in Rosario CTP we can create command, hook it up to the root viewpoint of our software factory and Application Explorer makes sure it gets executed to set, for example, the initial structure for the product we are building in our factory. From there on, all "normal" (old) Service Factory V3 recipes should work as expected! (Decide for yourself if that is good or bad news)

Below you can see what Application Explorer looks like after we executed the "Create Product" and selected the "Web Service Software Factory" in the "New Product" dialog. Also note the "ServiceContractDesignerViewPoint" folder that we have seen in the software factory schema above.  

Solution Explorer looks like this. Note the .pdef files! (More on that later)

To be continued...

In a previous post we have seen the Application Explorer acting as a starting point for our software factory. To continue our journey, let's have a closer look at this Application Explorer. For example, where does it get the list of installed software factories from? 

A quick look at GAC on our Rosario VPC reveals a few new assemblies that (based on their name?!) might have something to do with software factories. these are:

• Microsoft.VisualStudio.SoftwareFactories.Runtime.dll
• Microsoft.VisualStudio.SoftwareFactories.Runtime.VSHost.dll
• Microsoft.VisualStudio.SoftwareFactories.ApplicationExplorer.dll 

The Application Explorer is obviously implemented in "Microsoft.VisualStudio.SoftwareFactories.ApplicationExplorer.dll". Currently, no (public) documentation is available so we have to use reflector to find out this assembly holds the "ApplicationExplorerPackage" (inherited from Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Package) which is using the "FactoryManager" (more on that later). Besides the "ApplicationExplorerPackage" this assembly also implements the ApplicationExplorerToolwindow and the ApplicationExplorerControl which are representing the UI of the Application Explorer in Visual Studio.

Digging a little further, we can find out the "FactoryManager" (implemented in Microsoft.VisualStudio.SoftwareFactories.Runtime.dll) is using the "FactoryDescriptorsLoader" to search the Registry for installed software factories on the machine.

please note more classes are involved in this "discovery process" but I am only focussing on the high level to make this post not more confusing than it probably is already. I am sure you know how to use reflector yourself if you are interested in more details ;)

As we can see in the screenshot below the Registry (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\SoftwareFactories) in the Rosario VPC holds information about two installed software factories. By looking at the Service Factory node we can see the Registry contains the Name, Description, InstallDir, Version and SchemaFileName of the software factory.

SchemaFileName?! hmm....is this in anyway related to the "Software Factory Schema that is discussed in the "Software Factories" book? Below a screenshot of the Schema File for Service Factory that we can find in the "InstallDir" of Service Factory (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies). Pretty interesting to finally find concepts like "viewpoints" and "workproducts" related to software factory implementations.  

Without going into too much detail, how does this all work?

It all starts in the "VSPackage" (inherited from Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Package) that can be found in "Microsoft.VisualStudio.SoftwareFactories.Runtime.VSHost.dll". At some point a "FactoryManager" (Microsoft.VisualStudio.SoftwareFactories.Runtime) is instantiated. This "FactoryManager" is using a "FactoryDescriptorLoader" to read the Registry and to create (and cache) a collection of "FactoryDescriptor" classes. The information contained in the software factory Schema File eventually ends up as a "Factory" instance that holds the "FactorySchema" which is the root for the FactoryViewPoint, Command, WorkProducts, etc. The Application Explorer on its turn is using the "FactoryManager" to list the installed factories, the viewpoints it contains and enables us to (for example) execute the "Create Product" action that we discussed earlier.

Again, just the high level overview! There are a lot more interesting classes and concepts involved in this but it hopefully gives some basic understanding. In a next post we will try to understand the purpose of the "Commands",  "Viewpoints" and "Workproducts" that we have seen in the software factory Schema File.

To be continued...

A few months ago "Rosario November 2007 CTP" became available for download. Based on the available documentation, walkthroughs and “mini stories” we can safely conclude that this release wasn’t really build to please the software factory guys out there! However, what it *does* contain is a (limited!) version of Service Factory that works on a very early (?) version of the Software Factory Runtime. This might be interesting. Let’s have a look if this version of Service Factory shed some light about what we might expect from Rosario in the software factory space.

(Of course, this CTP is relatively old already and hopefully a new one will arrive in the coming ? but maybe we can learn something from this CTP already...)

Ok, how does Service Factory looks like in Rosario CTP? To find out we can start a new Service Factory project by using the Application Design template that can be found under the “Distributed Systems” node in the “new project” dialog.

After the template unfolded, the first thing to notice in our new solution is the new “Application Explorer”. From this new “Application Explorer” tool window we can create a “Product” that is based on the installed software factories on the machine. As we can see in the screenshots below this machine has two factories installed and one of them is “Service Factory”.

By selecting "Web Service Software Factory" and pressing "OK" in the "New Product" dialog we end up in a situation that is similar to the one we are familiar with when using the current Service Factory. We can create a "New Model" and use the factory "as usual" from there.

Digging a little further in this CTP tells us (Add or Remove Programs) GAX is installed and GAT isn't! Further we can see that besides the package that looks like the "normal" Service Factory a package called "Web Service Factory Application Designer Integration" is installed.

A quick look at the installation location of Service Factory (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Service Factory V3) tells us that this version of Service Factory indeed looks like an ordinary software factory that is build on top of GAX. The installation folder still contains recipes, vstemplates, T4 templates, etc.

What does this mean? Can we use our current software factories (or at least parts of them) in Rosario? If so, do we benefit from anything new? How does Service Factory integrate in the Application Explorer? Where do we need this "Web Service Software Factory Application Designer Integration" package for? Is the "Software Factory Runtime" in this CTP of Rosario only implemented by GAX?

To be continued...