Skinner's Blog

You folks are making it quite easy to come up with blog ideas. I just sit and wait for questions to come in. If more than one question comes in on the same topic, I’m going to post it! So here’s another. I’ve recently been asked a few times how to control...

I’ve been asked a couple of times now about how to save one of our UML diagrams out to an image file. We don’t have a menu item that does that exact thing in the diagrams themselves. We of course support a select-all, copy, then paste which satisfies...

I just recently presented a web cast that went quite well. Unfortunately, the resultant recording of that webcast has suffered from some quality issues. I’ll give you the various links to the webcast, but be forewarned, the audio link is probably your...

As I alluded to here , we want to make sure your migration from beta2 to RC goes smoothly. In order to make that transition as smooth as possible, I’m happy to announce a simple command line tool that will automatically upgrade your beta2 modeling projects...

At the same time that the RC build for Visual Studio is going live for our broader based customers ( and not just MSDN subscribers ), our team has made available the VS2010 Visualization and Modeling SDK! This is the rebranded DSL SDK that contains some...

At least for MSDN subscribers. :) Soma announced the availability here , as did Jason . Please go grab the bits as soon as you can, and get us your feedback ! As Brian mentions, this is a big milestone for us, as we have made huge progress from Beta2...

No, the RC for VS2010 has not yet hit the wire, but it will be very soon. :) One of the great things about the Beta2 version of Visual Studio 2010 was the fact that the TFS server as well as all the client side products came with a “Go Live” license....

[NOTE: This post is part of a blog series, the start of which is here .]   I got a number of questions around VS2010’s ability to support custom stereotype properties that could be included with a custom profile. Questions ranging from “hey, can...

I’m 35,000 feet in the air while I make this post ( which always geeks me out :) ), coming home after a few days participating in some events I pointed out in my last post . Although these trips are always tiring, they are also always *very* informative...

Wanted to mention a couple of presentations that I am participating in the coming weeks. Next week, I’ll be in Charlotte, NC and Malvern, PA keynoting in two of our many “The Ultimate Event: Visual Studio 2010 & Team Foundation Server 2010” pre-launch...

Last week was a very busy week for the Ranger team. They have just released a number of documents that will most certainly be a huge help as you and your team starts to migrate over to using VS2010 with Team Foundations Server 2010. Here is a break down...

Ok, so I was just sitting down, getting ready to write a nice long post about how to create your own UML Profiles when I discovered just how great the MSDN documentation is on this very subject. So instead of trying to recreate that work, please check...

[NOTE: This post is part of a blog series, the start of which is here .]   Happy new year! :)   Recently, I’ve had a few questions around how UML Profiles are supported in VS 2010, so figured I’d start the new year with a post about that. By...

[NOTE: This post is part of a blog series, the start of which is here .] I’ve had a couple of posts to date about how to use the new Layer Diagram, such as this one , and provided a quick video showing the basic usage of the diagram. What I’d like to...

Just back from PDC ! It was a very busy but great experience. It is always exciting to show folks all the great stuff that is about to RTM with Visual Studio 2010, and even better to see how you are planning on using those new capabilities. I participated...

Product groups at Microsoft work quite closely with the folks in Microsoft Research. Periodically we meet with our MSR colleagues to discuss the various challenges we are currently experiencing as we tackle real-world issues prevalent in shipping commercial...

Realized I haven’t mentioned that I am planning on giving a talk at this year’s PDC. Here’s that abstract: Visualization, UML, and DSLs Cameron Skinner Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2010 Architecture Edition introduces a whole host of new designers...

Following up on my last post, Jason Zander has actually created a simple survey that would be great if you could take. Check out his post here , or go directly to that survey from here . This type of feedback absolutely helps us create the best product...

There are a number of features in the product that completely depend on the source code you push through the feature in regards to memory utilization and performance. For example, the creation of the “Standard Graphs” ( any of the graphs generated by...

By now, you’ve pulled down the Beta2 bits and have started exploring. ( No you say? Please check this post for details on how to get the bits…. ) You may have questions, want to express concerns, find bugs and want to report them, or in general just look...

[NOTE: This post is part of a blog series, the start of which is here .] When defining layer diagrams for your organization, or various other modeling concepts and diagrams that you want to make available to your team, you can of course simply check in...

Jean-Marc has just posted some great details on the Beta2 version of the DSL SDK. The amount of capabilities that have gone into the DSL Toolkit this version has been great to see. That team has done a fantastic job of increasing the power of what a DSL...

[NOTE: This post is part of a blog series, the start of which is here .]   I’ve had a couple of posts that have discussed the general nature of the Layer Diagram ( check out this older post to get a rough idea of what this diagram is all about )...

Chris Lovett , an architect on my team who has a glorious and long history with Microsoft, has finally joined the blogosphere! His expertise is all things .NET, but in particular he knows the code behind the new DGML graphs and dependency diagrams that...

[NOTE: This post is part of a blog series, the start of which is here .]   Ok, you’ve downloaded the Beta 2 bits of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 . Now you want to explorer the new Modeling and Visualization tools. This post will help you...