Introducing the Visual Designers—Microsoft’s Modeling Strategy

Microsoft .NET Framework, ASP.NET, Visual C# (CSharp, C Sharp, C-Sharp) Developer Training, Visual Studio

Microsoft’s Modeling Strategy

As we stated at the outset, Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2005 Team System Modeling Strategy is based on three key ideas: domain-specific languages (DSLs), model-driven development (MDD), and Software Factories.

We consider these three topics together as comprising Microsoft’s new vision for how to add value to the software development process through visual modeling. It’s this "adding value" that distinguishes the new vision from the old vision, which—to put a label on it—we’ll call UML.

First to set the scene: The Object Management Group (OMG) has a licensed brand called Model-Driven Architecture (MDA). MDA is an approach to MDD based on constructing platform-independent UML models (PIMs) supplemented with one or more platform-specific models (PSMs). Microsoft also has an approach to model-driven development, based not on the generic UML but on a set of tightly focused domain-specific languages (DSLs). This approach to model-driven development is part of a Microsoft initiative called Software Factories, which in turn is part of a wider Dynamic Systems Initiative.

If you would like a more in-depth exploration of software factories, we recommend that you pick up Software Factories: Assembling Applications with Patterns, Works, Models and Tools, written by Keith Short and Jack Greenfield (Wiley & Sons Publishing; ISBN: 0471202843).