Application Architecture Guide Layer Diagrams for Visual Studio

We at patterns & practices released the 2nd edition of Application Architecture Guide last year (It’s available in Russian here). This guide contains layer diagrams for the various application types such as web, services, RIA etc. (Chapter 20 – 28).

In Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 you will find a new diagram type called “Layer Diagram” using which you can represent your system into logical grouping of components into separate layers.

We just made available a small VSIX package that takes the canonical layer diagrams from the Application Architecture Guide and makes them available in Visual Studio. You will find the “Application Architecture Guide Layer Diagrams” VSIX package here.  It’s marked “pre release” at this time. We will be posting a final release shortly after the release of Visual Studio 2010.

What’s in this package?

This package contains layer diagrams for the following five application types from the Application Architecture Guide:

- Web Application

- Rich Internet Application

- Rich Client Application

- Services Application and

- Mobile Application.

Once you download and install this VSIX package, restart Visual Studio Ultimate 2010. To see the layer diagrams in action, create a new project of type “Modeling Project” and add a new layer diagram to the project. Now you will notice a new node in the toolbox labeled “ Microsoft Application Architecture Guide 2nd Edition” with 5 layer diagrams as shown in Figure below:

Drag any one of these layer diagrams to the design surface to get started. Figure below shows the layer diagram for Web application as seen in the Application Architecture Guide.

Happy Modeling!