Since this blog has been all about my old job, I'm going to start a new one: UML and Agile Development in Visual Studio .

In the days long ago before I joined Microsoft, I was an itinerant consultant in UML. I'd wander the countryside with a slide deck, a projector and a cooking pot on my back, gathering small crowds under the shade of a tree to tell them the Good News...

I've joined MSF - the Microsoft Solutions Framework . MSF is about providing process "guidance". Software development processes are about who does what and in what order - role X writes a spec or a story, role Y writes the software, role Z tests it...

The Models Conference is in Genova, Italy this year (October 1-6). If you have developed some interesting stuff in DSL Tools, this is the place to share it and get useful feedback. If you're wondering about the best ways of using models to drive software...

The DSL Tools are extensible - as well as writing a specification of your own language, you can add your own code to extend the language and its tools in various ways. One of the best ways to learn the extensions is by reading the DSL Samples . They include...

The Models/UML conference has posted its call for papers http://www.modelsconference.org/ . Steve, Stuart and I take it in turns on the programme committee for this. (Stuart was Programme Chair last year.) "The MoDELS series of conferences are devoted...

We've just published an updated set of samples for the DSL Tools. As well as updates to the previous examples, which show how to customize your DSL, there's now a complete small end-to-end showing how a DSL can be used to generate the code of a project...

We use partial classes a lot in the DSL Tools . We need them to help compose code that's generated from different places, and generated with handwritten code. If you're not familiar with it, a partial class definition is just a set of methods, properties...

I do get irritated by over-officious tools. "You can't use that name, you've used it already over there." Well, I know, but I'm going to change that in a moment, and it'll be alright in the end, really. In the DSL Tools Customization Samples &...

In the DSL Tools Customization Samples & Guide there's some examples that use MDF rules to spot a change and react to it. (1) In the class diagram sample, attributes are displayed as a string like "aName : SomeType", and in the properties grid, the...

Interesting post and comments on Harry Pierson's blog: http://devhawk.net/2005/10/05/Code+Is+Model.aspx

One of the features of the DSL Tools is extensibility. With the language definition files, you can define a wide range of thing-and-link style graphical notations. The current version of the Tools comes with a set of templates for creating class, use...

JAOO in Aarhus, Denmark, is getting big - almost 900 participants, I heard. There was a Domain Specific Languages track on Wednesday - DSLs is really gathering steam! The day kicked off with an excellent plenary on Software Factories and DSLs by Microsoft...

There's now a DSL Tools FAQ , which I've pulled together from the multifariouse Q&A on the DSL Tools Forum over the past few months. Thanks to all the questioners and answerers.

Interesting progress - there's an independent company offering courses on DSLs, including DSL Tools as an exemplar. http://www.clipcode.biz/workshops/Clipcode_DSL_Workshop_Data_Sheet.pdf

DSL + Agile workshop I spent most of Monday running a DSL workshop at XP2005 , with Steven Kelly of MetaCase. There were 22 participants including ourselves, and people said it was an enjoyable and useful day. Results posted at http://www.dsmforum...

Software development is teamwork. The most important techniques you learn for project success -- or get wrong otherwise -- are about working in teams. The methods that have made the biggest improvements in development success rates are not tools or technical...

Martin Fowler has posted an interesting summary of DSLs at http://martinfowler.com/articles/languageWorkbench.html There are one or two surprising omissions. He doesn't mention http://www.metacase.com/ who have been in the business for years, nor www...

An overview of what my group in MS does: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/vstsmodel.asp Unusually for MS, “software factories” is partly methodology, as well as a strategy for developing tools around Visual Studio. A Software...

Steven Kelly of MetaCase and I are doing a workshop at XP2005 on " Agile Development with Domain Specific Languages ". Steven has been designing language-oriented programming tools for years, so it will be nice to work with him on this. Do DSLs help...

Erdem Sahin posted this question to the DSLTools web forum: Does DSL help to build Adaptive Object Models ? Yep, I reckon so. AOM is a very flexible architectural style in which business rules and other requirements are represented in metadata,...

Susan says : 1. Composing languages: a DSL can also be categorized based on whether it an encapsulated DSL that represents an application domain (e.g. finance, medical, etc) or an aspectual DSL that represents a concern that cuts across the application...

As always, the SPA conference www.spaconference.org was stimulating. Gareth Jones and I ran a workshop on "software factories and DSLs". Some of the points that came out clearly for me: Composing languages. It’s a big investment to create a DSL from...

At the excellent SPA conference ( www.spa2005.org ) John Daniels led a workshop session " A Taxonomy of Models". Defining “model” as including any kind of language, he made a table of how models are used; or rather, he wrote the outer headings and...

Nice post from David Ing: http://www.from9till2.com/PermaLink.aspx?guid=6011a529-8914-4160-8f2f-0ce7b988310c