Domain-Specific Development with Visual Studio DSL Tools (Microsoft .NET Development Series)

Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs)--languages geared to specific vertical or horizontal areas of interest--are generating growing excitement from software engineers and architects. DSLs bring new agility to the creation and evolution of software, allowing selected design aspects to be expressed in terms much closer to the system requirements than standard program code, significantly reducing development costs in large-scale projects and product lines. In this breakthrough book, four leading experts reveal exactly how DSLs work, and how you can make the most of them in your environment.

With Domain-Specific Development with Visual Studio DSL Tools , you'll begin by mastering DSL concepts and techniques that apply to all platforms. Next, you'll discover how to create and use DSLs with the powerful new Microsoft DSL Tools--a toolset designed by this book's authors. Learn how the DSL Tools integrate into Visual Studio--and how to define DSLs and generate Visual Designers using Visual Studio's built-in modeling technology.

In-depth coverage includes

• Determining whether DSLs will work for you
• Comparing DSLs with other approaches to model-driven development
• Defining, tuning, and evolving DSLs: models, presentation, creation, updates, serialization, constraints, validation, and more
• Creating Visual Designers for new DSLs with little or no coding
• Multiplying productivity by generating application code from your models with easy-to-use text templates
• Automatically generating configuration files, resources, and other artifacts
• Deploying Visual Designers across the organization, quickly and easily
• Customizing Visual Designers for specialized process needs

List of Figures
List of Tables
Foreword
Preface
About the Authors
Chapter 1 Domain-Specific Development
Chapter 2 Creating and Using DSLs
Chapter 3 Domain Model Definition
Chapter 4 Presentation
Chapter 5 Creation, Deletion, and Update Behavior
Chapter 6 Serialization
Chapter 7 Constraints and Validation
Chapter 8 Generating Artifacts
Chapter 9 Deploying a DSL
Chapter 10 Advanced DSL Customization
Chapter 11 Designing a DSL
Index 

Steve Cook joined Microsoft in 2003 to work on the DSL Tools. Previously, he was a Distinguished Engineer at IBM, which he represented in the UML 2.0 specification process at the OMG. He has worked in the IT industry for 30 years, as architect, programmer, author, consultant, and teacher. He was one of the first people to introduce object-oriented programming into the UK, and has concentrated on languages, methods, and tools for modeling since the early 1990s.

Gareth Jones is a lead developer in the DSL Tools team. He's been at Microsoft since 1997 doing various developer jobs such as building bespoke enterprise solutions, running the development of Microsoft UK's small business portal, and managing a consultancy team. Before joining Microsoft, he spent seven years leading development projects in the intelligence analysis, simulation, and aerospace industries.

Stuart Kent joined Microsoft in 2003 to work on the DSL Tools. Previously, he was an academic and consultant, with a reputation in modeling and model-driven development. He has over 50 publications to his name and made significant contributions to the UML 2.0 and MOF 2.0 specifications. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Software and Systems Modeling, and on the steering committee for the MoDELS series of conferences. He has a Ph.D. in computing from Imperial College, London.

Alan Cameron Wills was a methodology consultant for almost a decade, and used to get very frustrated when people asked about good tools to support the methods. So he was very pleased to join Microsoft in 2003 to help in the DSL Tools project. He has a Ph.D. in computer science, and was joint creator of the Catalysis approach to component-based development. He gets excited about software factories, photography, sailing, and hills.