Visual Studio Architecture, Visualization, Modeling, and UML Tools

Where's All the Posts?

Esther Fan — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:20:00 GMT

Wondering what happened to the activity on this blog? Check out the Visual Studio ALM + Team Foundation Server blog.

Got feature suggestions for Visual Studio?

Esther Fan — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 18:36:15 GMT

You can now post your ideas about how to improve Visual Studio and vote on them on the Visual Studio User Voice site. There are categories for Visual Studio Ultimate, Test and Lab Management, Team Foundation Server, and other specific areas. For more information, see Brian Harry's blog.

If you have bugs to report, please continue submitting them through Microsoft Connect.

Thanks for your help and support!

Visual Studio ALM at Microsoft TechEd 2011

Esther Fan — Fri, 27 May 2011 21:35:29 GMT

Lots of exciting stuff, so check out the session videos on Channel 9:

Social media and other resources about software architecture, visualization, modeling, and UML with Visual Studio 2010 now on our blog

Esther Fan — Fri, 27 May 2011 21:31:45 GMT

The right side of our blog now features Facebook and LinkedIn communities that focus on software architecture, visualization, modeling, and UML where you can find news, discussion, and other useful content. I also added other resources and a list of blogs about these areas.

How to: Visualize and describe workflow using UML activity diagrams in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate

Esther Fan — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 23:12:00 GMT

This short YouTube video shows how you can visually describe process workflow by using UML activity diagrams. You can link activity diagram model elements to work items, such as test cases, in Team Foundation Server:

(Please visit the site to view this video)

For more information about activity diagrams, see the following topics on MSDN:

How to: Visualize and describe users' requirements using UML use case diagrams in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate

Esther Fan — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 22:45:00 GMT

This short YouTube video shows how you can visually describe a software system's users' requirements by using UML case diagrams and link use cases to work items in Team Foundation Server:

(Please visit the site to view this video)

For more information about use case diagrams, see the following topics on MSDN:

How to: Validate code against the architecture using layer diagrams in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate

Esther Fan — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 22:32:00 GMT

This short YouTube video shows how you can visually describe your software's architecture on a layer diagram. You can also validate code against the diagram to maintain architectural control of the code.

(Please visit the site to view this video)

For more information about layer diagrams, see the following topics on MSDN:

Updated Architecture Tooling Guide for Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate

Esther Fan — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 18:57:00 GMT

The VS ALM Rangers have updated this guide, which includes automated guidance, hands-on-labs, and videos that show how you can use the Visual Studio architecture and modeling tools to help you understand an existing software system or create a new system.

New samples: Create UML elements quickly and run unit tests on UML extensions

Esther Fan — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 23:31:30 GMT

Alan Wills has created these new samples that help you work with UML more easily in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and has posted them up on the Code Samples Gallery:

How to create UML elements quickly by typing text
How to run unit tests on UML extensions

Samples that extend UML diagrams in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate

Esther Fan — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 20:13:00 GMT

Alan Wills has created several samples that let you extend UML diagrams in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate in the following ways:

Developing Windows Phone 7 apps with the help of dependency graphs in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate

Esther Fan — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 18:30:18 GMT

Chris Lovett, an architect on the Visual Studio Ultimate team, wrote an interesting article about developing his first Windows Phone 7 app. He shows how he used dependency graphs in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate to help him visualize and understand the organization of his code during the development process: http://bit.ly/eN1CNH

How to visualize your code or system with Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate

Esther Fan — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 23:06:00 GMT

Each of these videos are less than 2 minutes long and provide very quick overviews of how you can use Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate to perform the following tasks:

Export XMI Sample for Visual Studio UML Diagrams

Esther Fan — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 01:41:55 GMT

Steve Cook, a software architect on the Visual Studio team, has created a sample that shows how you can access the UML metadata in Visual Studio's modeling project system and export that data into XMI format for use with other tools.

For more info, see Cameron Skinner's blog post.

Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2 expands test capabilities and includes code visualization + modeling tools from previous feature pack

Esther Fan — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 23:21:53 GMT

This feature pack has just been released and includes the following capabilities:

Testing features:

Use Microsoft Test Manager to capture and playback action recordings for Silverlight 4 applications.
Create coded UI tests for Silverlight 4 applications with Visual Studio 2010 Premium or Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate.
Edit coded UI tests using a graphical editor with Visual Studio 2010 Premium or Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate.
Use action recordings to fast forward through manual tests that need to support Mozilla Firefox 3.5 and 3.6.
Run coded UI tests for web applications using Mozilla Firefox 3.5 and 3.6 with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium or Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate.

Code visualization and modeling features (requires Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate):

Use the Generate Code command to generate skeleton code from elements on UML class diagrams. You can use the default transformations, or you can write custom transformations to translate UML types into code.
Create UML class diagrams from existing code.
Explore the organization and relationships in C, C++, and ASP.NET projects by generating dependency graphs.
Import elements from UML sequence diagrams, class diagrams, and use case diagrams as XMI 2.1 files that are exported from other modeling tools.
Create links and view links from work items to model elements.
Create layer diagrams from C or C++ code and validate dependencies.
Write code to modify layer diagrams and to validate code against layer diagrams.

For more information and to download the feature pack, visit the Visual Studio Feature Packs page on MSDN.

MSDN Video Series: How to explore unfamiliar code in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate

Esther Fan — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 21:06:00 GMT

These videos show how you can use code visualization tools, such as dependency graphs, DGML, and Architecture Explorer, to help you understand what's going on in unfamiliar code:

For more information, see Visualizing Existing Code in the Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate product documentation.

PS: Please let me know how you like this post by clicking a star under RATE THIS in the top right corner or post comment below. If you don't like this post, please tell me what you want to see.

Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate helps you gain better control over code dependencies

Esther Fan — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 02:24:00 GMT

There's two ways that you can approach this in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate:

- At the physical level

You can visualize your code from the top-down by generating dependency graphs at the overall assembly, namespace, or class level, and then drill down to more granular levels.

If you have a very large solution, this can be overwhelming, so you can also use Architecture Explorer to start from the bottom-up. You can use dependency graphs or Architecture Explorer to create layer diagrams and maintain control over the code's architecture by running layer validation (see below).

- At the logical level

You can create layer diagrams from code and other artificts to visualize what the architecture should look like and then reverse-engineer the existing dependencies. You can save that diagram as a baseline and then edit the diagram to show where the dependencies should be.

You can also run validation against layer diagrams to get a list of conflicts and create linked work items so that you can address those conflicts incrementally. By running regular validation reguarly, you can maintain control over changes in the code that might conflict with the intended architecture.

For more information about how to perform these tasks, see these Visual Studio 2010 topics. If you also install the Visualization & Modeling Feature Pack, which is available for MSDN subscribers, with Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, you can create custom layer validation rules and perform the same tasks for C and C++ code.

I initially created this post to answer a question on the MSDN Modeling and Tools forum and thought other folks might find this useful too. Thanks!

What do you think of Visual Studio 2010?

Esther Fan — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 18:51:16 GMT

Jason Zander wants you to tell MS directly:

"It's been just over 6 months since we launched Visual Studio 2010 in April. I hope you've been busy digging in and taking VS out for a spin. Your feedback was invaluable to us as we were building VS - thank you! It's a great time for us to hear what you think so far. We are especially interested in hearing about your experience with regards to performance, reliability, and quality. The more details you share with us in this survey, the better we can understand your experience and apply what we learn into future versions."

- Jason Zander's blog post

Trouble with work item links and model elements in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate?

Esther Fan — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 00:21:00 GMT

Why aren't linked model elements appearing in my work items?

In Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, links between model elements and work items travel in one direction only, from the element to the work item. This means that when you link an element to a work item, the linked element does not appear in the work item. To enable bidirectional links, install the Visualization & Modeling Feature Pack. This means that when you create a link from a UML model element to a work item, a link from the work item back to the model element will also be created. To see this link in the work item, open the work item and refresh it manually.

Alas, bidirectional links are still not created automatically if you link a layer diagram element to a work item, so instead, create the link to the layer element from the work item. For more information, see How to: Link from Work Items to Model Elements.

Why aren't links to work items removed from model elements when I delete the links from the work item?

You must delete the link manually from the element. When you remove a work item link from a model element, the link from the work item to the element is also removed. However, when you remove a model element link from the work item, the link from the element to the work item is not removed. For more information, see How to: Link from Model Elements to Work Items.

Architecture Tooling Guidance for Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate

Esther Fan — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 23:47:31 GMT

The Visual Studio ALM Rangers have provided this practical guidance for the modeling tools in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate. This guidance provides common usage scenarios, hands on labs, and lessons learned from community discussions. These scenarios include understanding and reverse-engineering an existing application or starting a new application from scratch. The intent is to present you with examples that show how these tools can support you in real world scenarios, and to provide you with practical guidance and checklists, instead of an in-depth tour of the product features.

The Hands-On-Labs (HOLs) include:

New Solution Scenario
Explore an Existing System Scenario
Creating extensions with the feature extension
Extensibility Layer Diagrams
Reusable Architecture
Validating an Architecture

To download the guidance or learn more details, visit: http://vsarchitectureguide.codeplex.com/

August 2010: MSDN Library Content Update: Modeling the Application

Esther Fan — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 23:39:00 GMT

Modeling the Application

Visualization and Modeling SDK – Domain-Specific Languages

We're continuing the big overhaul of the VMSDK (was DSL Tools) topics to make them more accurate and more useful.

With the VMSDK, you can define domain-specific languages: graphical modeling tools that you can use in Visual Studio to generate code and other files, or as an interface to other tools. You build DSLs and other Visual Studio extensions into an integrated toolkit that is fine-tuned to the work of your team.

Please give us your feedback and improvements to these and other topics, in the Community Content section at the bottom of each topic. Don't forget that you can also ask questions or provide feedback in the VMSDK Forum. This is one of the best ways we have of knowing how we should improve our help files.

Highlights of what we've rewritten include:

New Sample: Electronic Circuit Diagrams The sample is available at the VMSDK site on Code Gallery.	Demonstrates: Copy, cut and paste preserving layout Embed diagram in a Windows Form in Visual Studio Couple model to external form by using Events Drop tool on element Text wrapping Dynamic node images Shape alignment command Composite elements Validation Menu commands and double-click
Getting Started with Domain-Specific Languages	Walk through creating a basic graphical DSL and use it to generate code or other files.
How to Define a Domain-Specific Language	All the steps in one place!
Customizing and Extending a DSL - and its sub topics - customizing presentation on the diagram, element creation, link creation, copy and paste, deletion, properties window, model explorer.	To tune the DSL for your application area, you can adjust what it looks like, how it responds to users' commands, and how it interacts with other tools.
Microsoft.VisualStudio.Modeling.Diagrams namespace	The header material now has class diagrams and summaries of the most important types, making it easier to find your way around. Several of the key types now have extended and more useful descriptions.
Navigating and Updating a Model in Program Code	A DSL provides an API on its model. You use the API to integrate the DSL with other Visual Studio tools, and to implement menu commands and other customizations.
Validation	Write constraints to warn your user when the model is not correct.
Propagating Changes	Write rules to keep different parts of a model in synch; write events to synchronize external tools with the model.
Customizing File Storage and XML Serialization	Customize how your users' models are stored on files.
Integrating Models by using Visual Studio Modelbus	Explains how to make links between models, and how to navigate the links in program code. You can also integrate with models created with the UML and Layer Diagram tools.
Generating Code from a DSL	It's very easy to generate text files such as program code, configuration files or reports from a DSL and from UML diagrams.
Sharing Classes between DSLs using a DSL Library	If you're building several integrated DSLs, you can share parts of their definitions in a common library file.

We’ve also made many small corrections and improvements – many of them from your input in the Community Content section at the bottom of each topic. Please keep them coming!

July 2010: MSDN Library Content Update: Modeling the Application

Esther Fan — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 21:46:00 GMT

We published the following updates last month. Please let us know how useful these improvements are to you and if there are other areas that you would like to see covered? For more details about additional July VSALM content updates, click here.

Modeling the Application

In addition to the highlighted topics below, corrections and improvements have been included in many topics from your input in the Community Content section at the bottom of each topic. Please keep them coming!

UML

How do you organize your modeling projects? New material this month:

Structuring Modeling Solutions	Suggests how you can divide the project into separate solutions that correspond to the components on layer diagrams.
Visual Studio Architecture Tooling Guidance	Provides practical guidance about how to use the modeling features in Visual Studio Ultimate by addressing various scenarios and including a list of frequently asked questions.

Visualization and Modeling SDK – Domain-Specific Languages

Integrating domain-specific languages with each other and with UML models is on the menu this month. These new and revised topics show how to link models using ModelBus. They include examples and new walkthroughs.

Accessing Models from Text Templates	Explains how to access a model by using the DSL directive processor.
Integrating Models by using Visual Studio Modelbus	Explains how to make links between models, and how to navigate the links in program code.
Using Visual Studio Modelbus in a Text Template	Describes how to handle interlinked models in a text template. This topic includes a walkthrough in which you set up a DSL that is accessed in both a text template and in other code.
How to: Add a Drag and Drop Handler	Let your users drag elements from one diagram to another. Shows how to include objects in the dragged prototype, and how to drag to or from a UML model. Shows how to define your handler as a MEF component. Includes brief discussion of ElementGroupPrototypes.

Channel 9 video series: UML with VS2010 Ultimate

Esther Fan — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:22:00 GMT

Clint Edmonson, an Architect Evangelist at Microsoft, has posted a series of videos that show how to use the Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate visualization and modeling tools in your software development process:

Part 1: Brainstorming a Project
Part 2: Organizing Features Into Use Cases
Part 3: Modeling the Business Domain
Part 4: Capturing Business Workflows
Part 5: Architecting an Application
Part 6: Designing a Project's Physical Structure
Part 7: Sketching Interactions with Sequence Diagrams
Part 8: Revealing Responsibilities with Class Diagrams
Part 9: Organizing and Managing Your Models

Channel 9: Visual Studio 2010 Code Visualization Tools

Esther Fan — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 23:14:00 GMT

In this video, Cameron Skinner describes and shows how to use these tools so you can better understand and manage the complexity of your applications: http://bit.ly/aTSvDf

Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate + Visualization and Modeling Feature Pack

Esther Fan — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 05:44:00 GMT

It’s been some time since we updated this blog, so to bring things up to date, we released the visualization and modeling tools for Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate in April. These tools make it easier to develop software that meets its users' needs by helping you perform the following tasks:

Understand existing code, its relationships, and its behavior through the use of Architecture Explorer, dependency graphs, layer diagrams, and sequence diagrams.
Clarify users' needs with UML models: use case, activity, sequence, and class.
Define software architecture with layer diagrams and UML models: component, class, and sequence.
Generate or configure parts of the application from UML models or domain-specific languages (DSL).
Make sure that code remains aligned with the design by running layer validation.
Plan work and track progress by linking model elements to work items in Team Foundation Server.
Customize models and diagrams by using the modeling extensibility capabilities.

If you have Visual Studio 2010 Premium, you can open models and diagrams created with Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and run layer validation against code. Building on this, we also released the Visualization and Modeling Feature Pack in June to support the following tasks in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate:

Generate code from UML class diagrams.
Create UML class diagrams from code.
Import UML class, sequence, and use case elements from XMI 2.1 files.
Create and view links from work items to model elements.
Generate dependency graphs for ASP.NET Web, C, and C++ projects.
Create and validate layer diagrams for C and C++ code.
Write custom code to create, modify, and validate layer diagrams.

To download a trial version of Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and the feature pack, see Visual Studio Downloads and Visual Studio 2010 Feature Packs. For more information, you can find the visualization and modeling documentation here and the feature pack documentation here. We'd love to hear your questions and feedback in the forums.

You can also check out Cameron Skinner's interview about the code visualization tools:

View Video
Format: wmv
Duration: 12 minutes, 30 seconds

How Do I: Use the Retooled System Designer in Visual Studio Team System 2008 Architecture Edition?

Mark_Groves — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 05:07:30 GMT

One of the major changes in Visual Studio Team System 2008 Architecture Edition is the ability to design systems with a Top-down approach. Richard Hundhausen has posted a great little video walking through the new feature.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts2008/cc178915.aspx