So what is new in the Software Factory world for Rosario? Well actually not much (someone is bound to shoot me down for that comment) :)
So firstly Rosario is not just about factories, although that is pretty much all I will comment on, so once you have your VHD up and running there are a bunch of walk-through's /mini stories to give you a sense of what you are able to do in this CTP.
- Developer Mini-Stories
- Architect Mini-Stories - for me this is my main focus
- Team Foundation Server Mini-Stories
- Tester Mini-Stories
- WiX Mini-Stories - looks like I'm gonna have to learn to love WiX
Toolbox
From a factory perspective the first thing of note is that the Service Factory Modeling edition is already built into the IDE (or rather a cut down version of this). Sweet.... so I can build my own Guidance Packages in Rosario.... not so fast there buddy although GAT/GAX is installed the option to build a Guidance Package in not on the list of available project types... doh!!!! ..... hmm I wonder if I can install my VS2008 Factories into this..... <actually GAX is installed but GAT isn't>
Application Explorer
Ok now the rubber is starting to hit the road, we have a new Window called Application Explorer, this window shows all available architectural and structural diagrams, so for example the screen grab below shows the Application Explorer listing all of the items that have been added to the Application Diagram, plus the grayed out Sequence, Logical Class, and Physical Class Diagrams. Right clicking within this window brings up a context menu with a 'Create Product' node ok now things are looking pretty slick...
So once you've added your applications you might want to visualize the interactions between them, now in the past you'd probably go into Visio /or whatever you prefer, but now you can add a sequence diagram to your solution and map your applications to it by creating Lifeline's on the selected sequence diagram.
this then creates the necessary lifelines for the applications that were selected
You can now start adding messages to your sequence diagram
it's now possible to bind your messages to the service operations defined on your application diagram (defined on the web service endpoints)
So all in all pretty cool stuff, I've made an executive decision I'm going to split this post into several posts as I've had this draft open since I first opened Rosario and other work commitments keep getting in the way doh!!! :)
So "it's all good" as my boss would say, the only bad and boy it so isn't a bad but I'm trying to justify the title :)...... is the need to hit the refresh button on the Application Explorer for your changes to appear.... I'm sure that will go away in time
But I have to say good job to the guys on this one..... I'm really loving the Application Explorer especially with it notion of ViewPoints and the ability to Create a Product by selecting an installed factory (yeah I know I've not talked about that in this post, but I will soon :) )