John, our PM is collecting feedback on the need and value of visualizing relationships other than inheritance and associations on class diagrams in the class designer team blog.  Your perspective on this is very much appreciated.

Cheers,

Ramesh.

Today we announced that support for C++ in the Class Designer has been cut.  There were several tools in C++ that required attention – for example support for Intellisense, Project System, Build System, Class Diagramming, etc.  We believed that we will not be able to address all the issues in all of these features by product release.  In the end we decided to concentrate on those features that will benefit the C++ developer the most and delivering a high quality experience around them.  Personally this was a very difficult and highly emotional decision for me as our team had spent considerable time and effort into enabling support for C++.

Your thoughts and feedback are welcome.

Ramesh.

The web chat transcripts are now available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats/transcripts/vstudio/vstscdqa_020205.aspx.

Thanks,

Ramesh.

In Beta1, Class Designer supported visualizing association relationships between two types where one type contained a field or a property whose data type is that of the second type.  For example, if you had a class Customer with a property whose data type is of type “Address”, invoking the “Show as Association” command in the context menu for the property will display an association line between Customer and Address.  I find this feature useful when I want to figure out how the various types in my project are associated.  You will be able to visualize association regardless of whether the associated type is defined in the same VS Project or in one of its referenced assemblies.

If you had a member whose type is that of a strongly typed collection, for example, a property whose type is OrderCollection which is a collection of Orders, most of the time you will be interested in visualizing the relationship between the class and the collected type – in this case Customer and Order, rather than the class and the collection type (Customer and OrderCollection).  In Beta 2, you will be able to visualize such associations.  There is a new context menu “Show as Collection Association” available on field and property members that will let you visualize the relationship to the collected type.

Class Designer uses a heuristic algorithm to create the collection association line when this command is invoked.  This is how it works:

For the data type of the field or property on which the command is invoked,

1)       Determine if the type is a collection. 

2)       If it is a collection, determine the collected type.

The type is a collection if it is an array, a known generic interface (or implements one), a known non generic interface (or implements one), has an indexer or has an enumerator.

The heuristic algorithm goes something like this:

• If it is an array the collected type is the field type.
• If the type has an indexer, the indexer’s return value is the collected type.
• If the type has an enumerator, the return type of the enumerator’s Current property is the collected type.
• If the type is a known generic interface or if it implements one or a derivative of one, the generic parameter to that interface is the collected type.
• If the type is a known non- generic interface or if it implements one or a derivative of one, the collected type is Object (weak).

Let's say you have code like the following:

    public class Customer

    {

        private IList<Order> orders;

    }

If you invoke the Show as Association command on the orders field in the Customer class, you’ll see the following:

If you invoke the Show as Collection Association command on the orders field in the Customer class, you’ll get the following:

Note the two arrows in the line.  That is a visual indication that this is a collection association.

Cheers,

Ramesh.

Ps: Don’t forget the web chat tonight from 5.30 P.M to 6.30 P.M PST.  Here is the link to the chat room.

The image I created for my earlier post on the auto layout feature in Beta 2 was created using the "Export Diagram as Image" feature coming online in Class Designer Beta 2.

This is also another feature that was highly requested by customers.  When you start a software project, we come up with an initial sketch of the class structures, their members, relationships etc.  This picture often gets embedded in some design specification.  We may even print this out and paste it on the wall.  Soon, the implementation phase begins.  In almost all projects I have been involved with (and I haven't heard anything to the contrary), there are changes made to the design.  A few weeks later you find that the image in the design spec no longer matches the actual implementation.  Since the Class Diagrams created in VS 2005 are just another view of your code, they are always in sync with any changes (there are a few situations when the class diagram may go out of sync - but it will let you know when this is the case - there is a cool feature called "Orphaned Shapes" which I'll have to write about!).  The Export Diagram as Image command allows you to publish/update the image in a shared folder.  If you have the image linked in your document, you'll then be able to get the image that reflects the latest implementation.  Well, now it will be up to you to actually update your documentation. :)

While writing this blog, a couple of things that the Class Designer doesn't address in V1 that came to mind.  When you actually start designing your project, you may just want to sketch out the classes and their members.  You don't want code being generated while you are doing this.  Unfortuately that is not possible with Class Designer.  This was one of those things that fell below the cut line during the planning stages.  It was a hard call but we felt that given the resource constraints we had to focus on the two most important things for V1 - robustness and performance.

The other thing we don't do is display the full method signatures of methods.  In Beta 2, you'll have the option to display the types of members (return types for methods).  However, method parameters will not be displayed on the design surface (they will be available via tooltips).  This was a subject of a big debate within the team.  But we decided to not display parameter information because of concern that it will take up too much screen real estate.  It will be interesting to get feedback on this issue.

Cheers,

Ramesh.

I am interested in finding out if you are finding any major performance issues with Class Designer - especially in creating new diagrams or opening existing diagrams.  Currently the time taken depends on the size of the project (and of course on your CPU speed, memory etc.) as we parse the code files in the project the first time a diagram is created for a project.

When we compare ourselves to the existing UML tools in the market we are doing as well or a lot faster.  However, when you compare it with WinForms we don't do so well. : )

Cheers,

Ramesh.

Currently the Class Designer allows you to edit the diagram (and thereby the code) through in-place editing of type and member names on the diagram.  The Class Details Window lets you edit other properties of type members (fields, properties, methods and events) like access modifiers, types of members, parameters to methods etc.

If you don't have VS 2005, you can find a screenshot of the Class Details Window here (towards the end of the document). You can find how to create and modify Class Members here.  The Class Details Window provides cool keyboard shortcuts (learn about it here).

I am interested in getting feedback on the Class Details Window.

Thanks,

Ramesh.