Will the Microsoft VSTS 2010 Architecture UML tools be used by the Development Community?
I have been playing around with the UML tools and the Architecture tools in Rosario. It is nice to see they have listened to our rants and complaints. My whining about their anti-UML attitude was the rant that started me blogging about 3 years ago with VSTS 2005, DSL, and Software Architecture and then later followed up with UML Tools desired from Microsoft.
As happy as I am to see them going with UML, I am hoping the grapevine is wrong, and that the tools are not exclusively for the VSTS 2010 Architecture version. I am afraid if that is the case, they won't be getting used very much at all. At least not in the environments I have been in lately. They buy the Professional version of Visual Studio with MSDN, or they buy the VSTS Developer version with MSDN. I have not seen anyone who does not have the Team System Suite using the Architecture version. Well they have it installed, but no one is using it. Depending on the cost, most shops I deal with will stick with SPARX EA.
Unless Microsoft can make it as cheap as SPARX EA to use their UML tools, I know I won't switch to them. I might if I see some super huge advantage, but right now I have done a lot work in SPARX and have implemented several UML Profiles and Pattern libraries I continuously reuse. One move they will definitely have to make is getting some good import and export tools available.
This article from the editors of SD Times is just plain nonsense. It states "Does that mean Microsoft was wrong to avoid UML in its original implementation of VSTS? Not at all. There was no culture of formal modeling in Microsoft’s traditional customer base of smaller and mid-sized companies. Formal UML-based modeling was far too complex for that market segment and would have worked against the rapid application development that characterized .NET development. In 2004, Microsoft was right to introduce modeling but to hold back from embracing UML." That is just goofy. UML has been around long before OOP was part of the Microsoft vocabulary. Waiting was absolutely the wrong thing to do, and they are now once again playing catch-up.
I have also read they are letting it up to the community at large to come up with the documentation tools. The UML is stored as XML and it should be easy to implement Office documentation generating libraries. They better hope someone takes the time to create these tools and offer them for free, or change there mind and start down that road right away. As nice as it would be to have the time to use this extensible model, I already have it in SPARX.
I am currently building a WPF Composite application with PRISM 2.0 that will do a lot of this. But that is a smaller piece of the bigger set of functionality, not the main feature set. If I can extract it, I will make it available. It will depend on how much time I have available. Right now, time is something I have very little of.
Like I said, hats of to the Microsoft crew for listening to us, hopefully they go the distance and make these tools available to all the developers using VS and not just to a few with enough cash to be able to afford VSTS 2010 Architecture Edition.
As happy as I am to see them going with UML, I am hoping the grapevine is wrong, and that the tools are not exclusively for the VSTS 2010 Architecture version. I am afraid if that is the case, they won't be getting used very much at all. At least not in the environments I have been in lately. They buy the Professional version of Visual Studio with MSDN, or they buy the VSTS Developer version with MSDN. I have not seen anyone who does not have the Team System Suite using the Architecture version. Well they have it installed, but no one is using it. Depending on the cost, most shops I deal with will stick with SPARX EA.
Unless Microsoft can make it as cheap as SPARX EA to use their UML tools, I know I won't switch to them. I might if I see some super huge advantage, but right now I have done a lot work in SPARX and have implemented several UML Profiles and Pattern libraries I continuously reuse. One move they will definitely have to make is getting some good import and export tools available.
This article from the editors of SD Times is just plain nonsense. It states "Does that mean Microsoft was wrong to avoid UML in its original implementation of VSTS? Not at all. There was no culture of formal modeling in Microsoft’s traditional customer base of smaller and mid-sized companies. Formal UML-based modeling was far too complex for that market segment and would have worked against the rapid application development that characterized .NET development. In 2004, Microsoft was right to introduce modeling but to hold back from embracing UML." That is just goofy. UML has been around long before OOP was part of the Microsoft vocabulary. Waiting was absolutely the wrong thing to do, and they are now once again playing catch-up.
I have also read they are letting it up to the community at large to come up with the documentation tools. The UML is stored as XML and it should be easy to implement Office documentation generating libraries. They better hope someone takes the time to create these tools and offer them for free, or change there mind and start down that road right away. As nice as it would be to have the time to use this extensible model, I already have it in SPARX.
I am currently building a WPF Composite application with PRISM 2.0 that will do a lot of this. But that is a smaller piece of the bigger set of functionality, not the main feature set. If I can extract it, I will make it available. It will depend on how much time I have available. Right now, time is something I have very little of.
Like I said, hats of to the Microsoft crew for listening to us, hopefully they go the distance and make these tools available to all the developers using VS and not just to a few with enough cash to be able to afford VSTS 2010 Architecture Edition.
posted by tadanderson at 9:59 PM
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