Skinner's Blog : DSL

DSL SDK for Visual Studio 2010 Beta2 Released

camerons — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:20:10 GMT

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 created via the toolkit can get done.

Man, this has been a crazy week, in all the best of ways! :)

Links

camerons — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 07:19:12 GMT

I try not to do this too much, but wanted to make sure you folks saw a couple of posts that were especially relevant.

Visual Studio Team System 2010 Development Edition

Brian Harry just posted about the Visual Studio Team System 2010 Development Edition that you've gotta check out. He points out a few of the critical new features in the product that you can check out in the current beta 1 bits. Check that post out here.

DSL Tools Modelbus Sample

Jean-Marc, a fantastic Program Manager on my team, has recently published a sample that shows how to take advantage of the new functionality the DSL team has made available in the recent release of the DSL SDK 2010 Beta1. The sample demonstrates the use of the Modelbus, which is a new technology that enables sharing between disparate DSLs.

The source of the sample is here, and the documentation that describes the sample is here.

Enjoy!

Visual Studio 2010 and DSL Toolkit SDK Beta Now Available

camerons — Fri, 22 May 2009 01:46:36 GMT

The Visual Studio platform team has just announced the availability of the VS 2010 SDK beta! This is great stuff, and includes lots of new features around the new Editor that is part of 2010, as well as the new work we have poured into the DSL Toolkit.

Here's a link to the SDK.

One of the changes we've done this turn of the crank is to move the DSL Toolkit out of the main SDK, but be sure to make available the Toolkit whenever the SDK releases. We've done this for a number of reasons ( minimize download times, more flexibility to deliver bits more often, etc. ).

If you download the SDK, there will be a link to the DSL Toolkit bits from the Start Menu. That link will take you directly to the download page, which is here.

To get an idea of what's new in the DSL Toolkit in the beta, please check out this page. But for the impatient, here's a snippet:

"In Visual Studio 2010, the F5 experience is improved, and deployment of a DSL considerably simplified, exploiting the extension manager in the Visual Studio platform and the new facilities in the Visual Studio SDK top create a VSIX package which is a simple zip archive that unpacks itself into the User’s extensions folder.
Visual Studio 2010 Beta1 also brings 11 new DSL features:

Different models can now interact with each other, (and with Visual Studio Team System Architecture UML designers), using the ModelBus. A DSL author can choose to generate a ModelBus adapter, that will expose his model to other models or tools.

Databinding support has been added, allowing Windows.Forms and WPF form-based designers to be created by binding a standard winform or WPF-based UI directly to DSL models. This enables developers to quickly create designers such as the .ResX or .settings designers in Visual Studio.

It is now possible to have completely or partially read only models, which can be used for instance by reviewing and commenting tools.

A number of UI enhancements have been added, including :

moveable labels for connectors,

sticky toolbox (when the user double-clicks on an item in the toolbox,it’s not necessary to return to the toolbox for repeated applications of the tool),

quick navigation and editing of compartments with the keyboard

Copy and paste of diagram elements to images (in Bitmap and .wmf/emf)

Copy and paste of model elements in or between diagrams

The notion of DslLibrary has been introduced. This enables factorizing and componentizing DSLs (for instance having several domain models have the same base-domain class). The authoring for this feature will not be present in Beta1

The DSLs can now be extended by third parties after they have deployment. The authoring for this feature will not be present in Beta1"

The team has worked extremely hard to hit this date, and in fact have shipped earlier than previously scheduled! This is a great milestone! :)

If you caught my talk at TechEd last week in LA, you can take out all those new capabilities that I demonstrated out for a test drive yourself.

Enjoy!

Cameron

DSL Multiple Views example and other links

camerons — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:29:54 GMT

Mr. Provost was recently interviewed by the ElegantCode folks. Find that podcast here.

Wanted to make people aware of the excellent work two of our MVPs ( Pascal Recchia and Anthony Guerot ) have done recently with the DSL Toolkit. Checkout this great article on how they have manipulated the DSL API in order to get multiple views over a single store. They have also provided access to a video showing the functionality, as well as the code they created.

This is great stuff, and does show the power of the DSL framework that we have built the UML designers coming in VSTS 2010 on.

With the 2010 product, we hope to make this type of functionality even easier, with even more extensibility options possible with new APIs we will be providing.

Enjoy!

DSL + UML = Pragmatic Modeling

camerons — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:33:41 GMT

There has been some speculation in the press recently around Microsoft's commitment to DSLs now that we are planning on supporting five UML 2.1 diagrams in the Rosario release ( Class, Use Case, Component, Sequence, and Activity diagrams ). Specifically, some articles have been written in a way to lead the reader towards a perception that Microsoft is moving away from DSLs and towards UML. Not at all correct! I wanted to take a moment and set the record straight on this, and start a broader conversation.

Let me first start by making one thing very clear: Microsoft is very committed to our DSL strategy, and in particular to the DSL toolkit that ships as part of the VS SDK. In fact, our UML designers are built on top of that toolkit.

I believe that supporting both approaches to modeling gives developers and Architects alike the "right tool for the right job". For those folks who want to analyze and design their architecture using a standard notation that does not imply an implementation decision, use some UML diagrams. UML is great for describing higher level concepts and for defining the initial glossary that can be used to describe the concepts necessary to facilitate broader communication. For those folks who have decided on an implementation strategy, and do not want to be encumbered by the more general nature of the UML to describe that implementation choice, use DSLs.

In the coming months, you will very likely hear me or others on the team talk about using UML at the "logical" layer and DSLs at the "physical" layer. We are really trying to promote a clean separation between the two approaches, while at the same time, attempt to maintain an understanding of how one can inform the other, and vice versa. In this way, we are hoping to more cleanly support the understanding and intent behind the models at each layer.

So this is not a "DSL vs. UML" conversation. This is a "DSL + UML" conversation. And more importantly, this is about meeting our customers where they are and giving them tools that allow them to get to where they need to be.

The true innovation in this space is going to be how we can seamlessly connect the two approaches, and how we can make modeling more central to a broader range of people.

Stay tuned. :)

Cameron