Practical Software Factories in .NET

By Christoph Wienands and Gunther Lenz

Book Overview

The Software Factory methodology is based on recognition of these similarities and a drive to extend the concept of "reusability" to the point where we achieve entirely automated product lines. Based on an analysis and understanding of the common features and techniques of a set of applications, a Software Factory defines a tailored, end-to-end methodology for building these applications. At the heart of the Software factory methodology is the concept of Domain Specific Languages (DSLs), which in essence are development environments specifically tailored to the set of applications in hand. It removes a certain degree of flexibility but greatly enhances productivity by removing a lot of the coding complexity (for an analogy, consider the use of the now ubiquitous drag-and-drop controls in Winforms or Visual Basic).

However, with the emergence of the Microsoft Software Factories SDK, upon which this book is based, they are moving firmly into the mainstream. For the first time, with this book, .NET developers and architects can see how to put this methodology to practical use in real projects. Throughout the book, every chapter is accompanied with hands-on examples performed on a real-world case study, using Microsoft's Software Factory tools.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 159059665X
• ISBN13: 9781590596654
• Release Date: July 2006
• Publisher: Apress
• Length: 214 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.1" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Software Factories in Practice

This book is not a user manual for DSLs or the GAT/GAX technologies. While it shows the basic technologies with small samples it is by far not comprehensive, but the book points to further resources to explore the technologies. The book is rather meant to describe the process on how to implement a Software Factory in an exisiting product environment. We successfully used this approach for our product development and published the results http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc496679.aspx . If you want to implement a Software Factory in your environment, read this book.....

Anything that moves the factory space forward is a good thing

I was a bit dissapointed in this book, however I still highly recommend it to anyone interested (as I am with a book of my own on the way) in factories. I was expecting far more in terms of real-world implementation, but I do understand all to well from experience that the pieces are not quite there yet. I suppose my dissapointment was in the name of the book. This is a far more theoretical 'what could be' book then 'here is how you do this now' book. That being said, they do a good job of providing a nice single resource for defining many core concepts and adding (especially to a MSFT audience) many critical knowedge areas. So bottom line, if you are even thinking about factories (and have already read the seminal work by Microsoft) then give this a read. In my book I hope to be far more 'Practical' and able to show an 'A-Z' example from iterative Factory creation to iterative factory consumption and deployment. Thanks, Damon Wilder Carr, CEO agilefactor