Software Factories

SCSF Sample Application and Demo Script published on Smart Client Contrib

Steve Eadie — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:55:58 GMT

So the guys over at the Smart Client Contrib site have just published a sample application and a demo script, now that is awesome. For me this is going to be of great help as although I'm known as the factory guy in my org, I don't always have time to keep my own personal factory samples as up to date as I'd like.... and if truth be told sometimes I'm burning the midnight oil to pull together a demo that I've been asked to do for a client, or even just internally... So having a ready made sample app and demo script is cool by me ..... great job guys

Software + Service Blueprints - Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint

Steve Eadie — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 02:06:36 GMT

On Wednesday you may want to take a little stroll over to here

Here's an overview

The Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint is source code and guidance for developers describing how to use Microsoft Silverlight and Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies together in business applications and Internet Web sites. SharePoint applications that use Web Parts can now be built using Silverlight user interface elements. This capability enables a fresh look at data exposed through SharePoint Products and Technologies using the modern graphics capability in Silverlight.

Interesting times....

tick, tick, tick, boom

Steve Eadie — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:52:20 GMT

THEY'RE HERE..... Service Factory Modeling Edition - February 2008 has landed.... download the source from here, binary from here

Happy days :) .... not much to say I'm off to download and install into my VHD's

Tick, tock, tick, tock

Steve Eadie — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:35:42 GMT

Web Client Software Factory - Feb 2008 release is almost with us, the wiki has been updated.... just gotta keep hitting refresh on the releases page :)

With all the chatter on the discussion forums for people wanting to get their hands on both this and the Service Factory, it feels more like the launch of a must have gadget ;)

All I can say is that the guys over at P&P have done a stunning job building the factories, to get such a high demand for new bits..... kudos guys

GAX/GAT February 2008 Final Release

Steve Eadie — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:51:53 GMT

I go away for a weekend thinking meh what could happen between now and Monday, well I'm really pleased to say that GAX 1.4 is with us!!!

or as per this screen grab GAX 1.0 ???? :)

Yeah Baby GAT/GAX (sorry guys, I really can't get used to saying GAX/GAT :) February 2008 Final Release is here. (hmm exactly what does Final Release mean?)

So what are the highlights of this release

Support for both VS2005 & VS2008
you no longer need to uninstall GAX to upgrade, guidance packages that are registered with the previous version of GAX will automatically be registered with the current version of GAX .... seriously cool :)
- Note that folks on the forums are having mixed results with this, you do need to uninstall GAT but not GAX.... I will post up any issues as I find them
well good news is that you can have side by side VS2005 and VS2008 installs.... sweet
Improved uninstaller, GAX will attempt to uninstall any packages that have been manually installed, you will need to uninstall any packages that were added using MSI's
various fixes, are included in this release, including the fix to allow us to get our hands on the source for the Service Factory

So congrats and kudos to Grigori Melnik and his team for getting this out of the door....

However, back to this Final Release issue, Tom mentions that GAT/GAX is no longer classed as a CTP, now what does that mean, is it now a product, is it now supported?, can I continue to build my factories using GAT/GAX without having to wait for Rosario tooling?, will there be future enhancements, or does final mean end of the line for GAT/GAX? ..... seriously I have a ton of questions.... anyone from the team or anyone else from the P&P/Team Arch care to comment :)

Anyway.... I'm off to make my factories and GAX 1.0 play nice

if you got to this part in the post I'll reward you with the link, go get it http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DF79C099-4753-4A59-91E3-5020D9714E4E&displaylang=en

Software-plus-Services Blueprints for VS2008 now Live!

Steve Eadie — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 02:25:20 GMT

It's late (well for my timezone).... so I'll just point you to Mike's blog

VS Team Architect Blog : Architect Edition Survey

Steve Eadie — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 14:21:55 GMT

Mark has just posted the link to a survey on Team System Architecture Edition / Team Suite, please take the time to go do this survey...... Software Factory tooling needs you :)

See Mark's post here for more details and the link

Service Factory for Visual Studio 2008

Steve Eadie — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 14:09:29 GMT

well looks like Amazon were not the only ones to deliver a belated Christmas present, Don's elves have uploaded the runtime binaries for a version of the Service Factory that runs on Orcas/Visual Studio 2008.... you can go get it and read more about it here, hopefully I'll get a chance to put it through its paces over the next day or so.... yup you read that right I'm back at work already

Situation Normal

Steve Eadie — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:00:37 GMT

GAT works in Rosario CTP10.... everybody stand-down :)

Rosario CTP10 the good, the bad, and the meh

Steve Eadie — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:40:16 GMT

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 :) )