Naturally, I get asked this all the time. What are the differences between the 'EFx Factory' and software factories such as the 'Web Service Software Factory' from patterns & practices? [Now, I do need to say this, I do work closely with the patterns & practices teams who built Service Factory, in fact, I am still a member of the expert advisory board on that project. So, I do need to be careful how I word this :) or Don and Tom will kill me.] My aim here is to give a fair comparison between

In a previous FAQ we addressed some of the fears that our 'eager-professionals' are likely to have about the introduction of software factories into their projects and organisations. In this post I want to address one of the concerns that the expert solution developers among them and their organisations will face with the advent of software factories. Some of those fears raise the question of "where will my expert development skills fit in with solution development with software factories?" Specifically,

OK, so first off I want to address the more personal, individual aspect of this question, rather than the more broader industry angle - which can be found in many other references online and offline (books, articles and the like). These other references describe in detail the drivers for software factories, and why we as an industry need them to industrialise software development. But that's not what we are going to explore here. Instead, I want to tackle the personal view points of the folks perceived

Considering the EFx Factory and its core composability features with extensible technology-independent models, a few astute people soon get around to asking the following question: Isn't the EFx Factory just another implementation of MDA? Backgrounder Model Driven Architecture ® (MDA) is a methodology created by Object Management Group (OMG). Their definition of MDA can be found from their FAQ page . (excerpt below) "The MDA is a new way of developing applications and writing specifications, based

The question usually goes something like this: Define what is a Software Factory? Followed by something like this: I built a command line application/a guidance package/a script (make your choice) that code generates some useful component – is that then a software factory too? This one is a real challenge to define in a short post. Chinnese version here . Backgrounder This is more than a fair enough question, and most people are now asking it, and trying to distinguish whether they already have factories

The first question I always get asked: Do you support round-tripping of the generated code your factory creates ? In other words, do you support a developer going into the generated code, modifying it in an arbitrary way, and then read back those code changes and their intended meanings into the models used by the factory? [Quite often the asking party has the handy Class Diagram functionality of Visual Studio in mind when they ask this.] Backgrounder It works like this for our particular factory

I often get the same basic set of FAQ questions reoccurring when discussing or demonstrating factories to technical focused folk, so much so I thought I'd do a short series on those frequently questions and answers. The idea being to share the thinking behind some of this stuff that may be useful for other people's factories and helping you make informed decisions in the design of your own factory. Also I will be trying to socialise the terms used and use practical examples. I will be creating a