Ed_H_MS (Moderator): Welcome to today’s chat with Team Architect. We’ll be answering questions and discussing our suite of designers for designing service oriented systems as well as logical datacenters, deployment, and extensibility.
DavidHo_ms (Expert): Hi – I am the Test Manager for the team.
Ed_H_MS (Moderator): I will ask the hosts to introduce themselves.
DmitriyN_MS (Expert): Hi, I am Dmitriy Nikonov, Program Manager for Visual Studio Team Architect working mostly on Logical Datacenter Designer, deployment and extensibility functionality
IanBa_MS (Expert): Hi, My name is Ian Bavey. I’m a developer on the Application Designer team and I’ve been at Microsoft for a little over 5 years.
PedroSi_MS (Expert): Hi, my name is Pedro Silva. I’m a developer for the Application Designer. I’ve worked at Microsoft for 11.5 years in several different groups – Encarta, MSDN, Visual Studio, etc. You can read more about DSD on my blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/PedroSilva.
PhilLee_MS (Expert): Hi, I’m Phil Lee. I’2013-08-28 13:52:38’m the test lead for one of the SOA test teams. I’ve been testing at MS since VB4.
ErbilY_MS (Expert): Hi, my name is
DinaFes_MS (Expert):
A: Hi, I’m Dina Fesselmeyer. I’m a Program Manager working on Visual Studio Team Architect. I work on the Logical Datacenter and am the community lead for our team.
DmitriyN_MS (Expert):
Q: Are we going to talk aboui installation?
A: Dima, if you mean deployment – we can talk about it, as long as it is within Visual Studio Team Architect functionality, I can’t really talk about MOM or SMS here
Ed_H_MS (Moderator): And I am Ed Hickey, Visual Basic MVP Lead. Glad you all could make it today!
As you can probably tell, this is a new chat client. To submit a question for our hosts to answer, please use the “Submit a Question” radio button in the bottom room, then click “Send”, this way we can get them in the queue to answer. If you just want to add a comment to the chat window, use the “Guest Chat” radio button.
Let’s get started! Fire away with your questions for our hosts.
DmitriyN_MS (Expert):
Q: I have a question for the experts
A: fire away
Bill Gibson (Expert):
A: Hi I’m Bill Gibson, lead PM on the application modeling tools.
AlexTorone_MS (Expert):
Q: I have a question for the experts
A: Hello, My name is Alex Torone, I am a Lead Program Manager on the Visual Studio Team Architect Team. I am primarily responsible for the feature areas of Deployment Designer, Logical DataCenter Desigers, Settings Constraints, deployment reports and extensibilty features of the distributed service designer suties.
DmitriyN_MS (Expert):
Q: Dima
A: Yes, we can definitely talk about it. ask the questions
Ed_H_MS (Moderator): Thanks Paulo
DmitriyN_MS (Expert):
Q: I have a question about Logical Data Center Designers, can it probe the servers for their configurations and contrains rather than we adding them manually?
A: Yes and no. For example, we have Import IIS Settings functionality, where we can import settings of your IIS server into the IISWebServer. On the other hand we don’t “scout” your entire environment and discover servers, but there is a partner of MS who we are working with on doing some environment discovery work
DinaFes_MS (Expert):
Q: Is latest CTP from Dec? Does it make sense to do it now or wait for next CTP? Do I really need to PC’s to setup VS Team Architect?
A: The Dec CTP was an early interim build and there were issues with Application Designer and Logical Datacenter Designer. You might wish to wait for the next CTP or even better Beta 2 🙂
DavidHo_ms (Expert):
Q: I’m working in
A: Not sure which service pack you are reffering to, but I think the best place to get help in this is throught the Knowledge base on http://www.microsoft.com/ or product support. If you can be more specific I might be able to provide better guidance.
DinaFes_MS (Expert):
Q: Is there a general timeframe for the Beta2?
A: Beta 2 is scheduled to be released this summer.
PhilLee_MS (Expert):
Q: When is the next release of VS Team Architect?
A: We just released the December CTP, which frankly doesn’t have very good functionality for our features. There is one further “customer tech preview” to be released in the next month or so. I don’t have a good feel today for its expected quality. The next significant release that I know of will be Beta2. The functionality in that release will be very good. The CTP releases are just ocassional builds out of the cycle of builds. There’s not much effort that goes into stabliziation.
DmitriyN_MS (Expert):
Q: Is ther some way for the Infrastructure Modeller to ‘discover’ my current architecture setup in the different deployment zone (Staging, dev, test, production) ?
A: Yes and no. For example, we have Import IIS Settings functionality, where we can import settings of your IIS server into the IISWebServer. On the other hand we don’t “scout” your entire environment and discover servers, but there is a partner of MS who we are working with on doing some environment discovery work
PedroSi_MS (Expert):
Q: Team Architect include Application Modelling, Deployment Modelling, and infrastructure modelling…I have seen that discussions have taken place regarding Business Process modelling…what are the plans for that.
A: Business process modeling is an area of interest for DSD going forward, but we have no concrete plans at this point. We’ll review it as part of future planning for our designers.
AlexTorone_MS (Expert):
Q: What level of extensibility will there for the datacenter designer be to add new appliances and equipment to the system with specific functionality such as caching equiptment, 3rd party load balancing (Cisco) etc?
A: The *logical datacenter* designer is meant to represent a logical model of the hosting environment. The important data that we communicate is really about the configuration and services required by the applicaitons. However, with our extensibility SDK that we are shipping in Beta2, you will be able to Model just about anything you want including cacheing equiement etc. The limitations however are that you only will be able to visualize servers and endpionts (large boxes and smaller boxes). I should point out that in future releases, the Windows Management team are building tools to model exactly that, the physical environment.
Bill Gibson (Expert):
Q: Hi I want to know if it’s possible (and how can i do) to create application templates (such UI for CRUD) and attach these object to a object ACD in order to optimize th time needed to develop an commercial application.
A: There are a few techniques available to you:
You can create appropriate templates off-line from the ACD and then associate these with an application on the ACD using the template property.
You can then if you choose create ‘standard’ applications on the Application Designer which reference thses templates. Once done you can then add these templated applications as prototypes to the toolbox. This creates a prototype that can be shared with others.
IanBa_MS (Expert): The best place to start is http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/teamsystem/. This has several links that should help you. In addition there are a number of blogs from team members on blogs.msdn.com.
DmitriyN_MS (Expert):
Q: help me i cant chat?
A: you are chatting right now, aren’t you….
PhilLee_MS (Expert):
Q: What is the Team Architects program’s philosophy regarding web services vs .NET remoting? Do you still see a role for .NET remoting? Does the Application Connection Designer support .NET remoting as well as web services?
A: It has it’s place for communication behind the firewall. Unfortunately we won’t be able to give full support for it as we will for web services. We just didn’t have time to support both.
DmitriyN_MS (Expert):
Q: In the Distributed System Diagram tool, when defining a WebService will there be support to add WSE semantics
A: we are working with WSE on this
IanBa_MS (Expert):
Q: What are the best references / articles to read to get the background / concepts for using the desingers?
A: The best place to start is http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/teamsystem/ which has links to Whitepapers and other documentation. You can also look for blogs from team members on blogs.msdn.com – Ali Pasha, Keith Short, Jack Greenfield all have blogs that may interest you.
AlexTorone_MS (Expert):
Q: I’d like to ask about application partitioning. How do we take an enterprise scale applications and split them up into chunks; each of which may contain shared components?
A: I’m not sure if you played with the System designer yet. Right click on the applicaiton designer and “desgn system”. The system designer allows you to chuck up the application, or better yet to define system boundaries and re-use scenarios. For example, if you wanted to deploy the same service twice to different machines with different configuration that’s the tool that will allow you to do this. If by shared components you mean libraries, dlls, and services; today we capture all of this information in the deployment report and for version 1, you can script over the deployment meta-data to ensure that you deploy each shared service. Lastly you can write constraints that check for the existences of required services using the tool and the SDK in the logical datacenter model.
DmitriyN_MS (Expert):
Q: what I would like to see process for the infrastructure Modeller that can discover my current infrastructure or I put it in, I then input a second Infrastructure Model, and the infrastructure modeller will then lay out a road map on how to morph my current
A: this is an interesting option, we will record it and see what we can do about it. It is not available, however, I agree that we need to look into something similar
DinaFes_MS (Expert):
Q: in the DEC CTP, i’m having trouble adding any system or application diagrams to an existing solution that i originally created using Beta 1. any known issues?
A: Yes, there are known issues in the Dec CTP adding diagrams to existing diagrams.
PhilLee_MS (Expert):
Q: Do you really need AD to install VSTS? Is there anyway to install VSTS without AD? For the Dec CTP that is.
A: I’m not quite following your question. when you install VSTS, you’ll get the AD. there are no options to install VSTS without the AD.
ErbilY_MS (Expert):
Q: Is there going to be another CTP before beta2? (Not just VS, but the Team System)
A: We will have another CTP before Beta2 in February with standard and pro editions. Unfortunately, Team System won’t be in this CTP.
PedroSi_MS (Expert):
Q: What level of code generation will be part of this? and do the code changes get reflected back to the model?
A: The Application Designer generates code for web services and round-trips code changes. We only reflect changes to the method signatures of web services not any code within a method. But, any changes made in code method signatures, attributes, and web service class definition will be updated on the diagram.
DavidHo_ms (Expert):
Q: Is there plans to add design patterens support to team architect?
A: We believe design patterns are an important part of our future offerings, but Whidbey will not directly support design patterns through VSTA. Team System Architect will support development methodologies like Microsoft Solution Framework (MSF).
IanBa_MS (Expert):
Q: Are you working on improving the user interaction of the design surface? It can be really hard to select some of the elements. And every demo I’ve seen the presenter struggles with simplly selecting, dragging, etc.
A: We’ve made a number of changes to the UI in beta 2 – hopefully that will address your concerns. If there is anything specific that you think needs to be improved please let us know so that we can consider the suggestion for RTM.
DmitriyN_MS (Expert):
Q: hi i have a big problem with my directx. whena i want to start an application with direct 3D tells me that cannot initialize direct 3d acceleration. also when i restart the service from the directx tool (enable/disable) the application plays but awful.
A: Unfortunately, we are talking about VS Team Architect here, you’ll have to wait for DirectX experts to have their chat and ask the question
Bill Gibson (Expert):
Q: Do you foresee people continuing to do classic class level OO design in non MS Tools and then using Team Architect for modeling larger scale concepts like web services?
A: Yes, we expect custiomers to use OO modeling as part of an overall system development approach. Typically early in cycle to develop high-level concept models that assist in defining the domain. And then later in cycle to assist in the design of individual applications and frameworks. We expect an increasing number of people involved in the latter activity to use the Class Designer once released because of its tight integration with code.
AlexTorone_MS (Expert):
Q: It seems that VSTS has omitted the level of detail to thoroughly model an application’s projects, especially wrt Dlls. Could you comment?
A: The application designer in VSTA is about modeling the structure of the applications. By application we mean a deployable unit of function (eg: can run in it’s own process). The connections (wires) between these applications represent communication protocols supported between those applications. If dlls are part of the applicaiton, they are simply deployed with the application. So if I have one web service project and 12 class library project all of which are referenced, the deployment report will catch them all. The point is that you will not see dlls references on the applicaiton diagram by design. We are considering adding a feature for another release that lets you drill into the implementation of the service but no plans yet. Lastly, if you want to design the dlls with class designer, that is an option for you as well.
DavidHo_ms (Expert):
Q: Terry Halpin has expressed intents to develop an open source tool for ORM . He has also expressed an interest in doing that as a plugin for
A: I haven’t heard anything about this, but it might be possible with a future release of the model framework extensiblity (MDF).
IanBa_MS (Expert):
Q: regarding the issues adding diagrams to existing projects, any workarounds?
A: Could you be more specific in the issues you’re seeing? We’ve fixed a number of bugs in this area, but it would be great to make sure we’ve addressed your specific concern.
Ed_H_MS (Moderator): For those of you just joining us, we are chatting with the Team Architect group from VS Team Systems. Your questions are welcome.
PhilLee_MS (Expert):
Q: Which release better represents the functionality discussed here, The CTP or Beta 1 refresh?
A: I’m sure where “here” is, but the quality of our features in the Dec CTP was not very good. they are usable, but you’ll have to work through some bugs. the CTP releases are not stabilized prior to release. the Beta 1 refresh was really targeted to get the rest of the VSTS features out to customers rather than strictly refreshing the VSTS features that were released with B1 (ie
DinaFes_MS (Expert):
Q: I have been using the Sept CTP and check-in of a bug work item doesnt close the status of that workitem, is it by design or currently not implemented feature?
A: Sanjay, that’s part of team foundation server. You may want to check on the transcript from their chat last week.
DmitriyN_MS (Expert):
Q: So in VS beta2 will that be Team System beta1? (And the Quality you expect for Beta1)
A: Beta 2 is way more stable and contains a lot more functionality that B1, I highly recommend it when it becomes available.
PhilLee_MS (Expert):
Q: Any answer on the question regarding the Go Live license date?
A: We don’t have anybody in the room with specific details, but we expect it be part of the B2 offering. I’m sorry that I can’t be more specific.
PedroSi_MS (Expert):
Q: Will there be support for Web services exposed directly from
A: We don’t have native support for
PhilLee_MS (Expert):
Q: When will there be a Go live license with the VS 2005?
A: just answered.
IanBa_MS (Expert):
Q: Hey is there any speical thing for Webservices in .Net 2005
A: Yes. Visual Studio Team Architect contains an Application Designer which provides a graphical way of designing web services and connected applications – check out http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/teamsystem/teamcenters/architect/default.aspx for more info.
PhilLee_MS (Expert):
Q: Will VSTS be released together with VS 2005?
A: That’s the plan.
DmitriyN_MS (Expert):
Q: How do you see a more Business Architecture level fitting into VSTS in the future – are there plans to develop the tool/toolset in this direction?
A: We are moving in this direction, if you mean representing your application architecture and/or datacenter design in VS Team architect.
PedroSi_MS (Expert):
Q: Is there connection between VS Team Architect and SQL Server 2005 enterprise-broker?
A: No, there isn’t.
DinaFes_MS (Expert):
Q: Dina, you said that VS2005 Beta 2 will be released this summer, yet in yesterday’s Class Designer chat it was stated that Beta 2 will be released in March. Is there a definite release date ? Does this mean Beta 2 of the entire VS2005 suite, including VSTS?
A: Apologies, Beta 2 – March 2005. Visual Studio 2005 will be released in Summer 2005. Detailed pricing/licensing will be announced in March.
AlexTorone_MS (Expert):
Q: These designers are an early delivery within the DSI. How are the gaps going to be bridged to the physical layers beneath from logical layers that can be modelled with these tools?
A: Great question. We work very closely with the Windows Management teams. In fact they built the engine to process constraints and they own the SDM model (the underlying schema or DSL that the tool was built on). The windows team has plans to build out tools for the physical layer, the physical layer will allow binding from the logical to physical to enable the ITPro to deploy the applicaiton. This level of specificity will come in the next release of the tools. Today, an ITPro will need to write a script to map logical servers to physical servers.
PhilLee_MS (Expert):
Q: Why are asp.net programs no longer considered solution or applications, but only websites???
A: Well, we don’t really have the ASP.Net team on the chat. That’s really their domain. We have the “
DmitriyN_MS (Expert): Dima, What do you mean by support for enterprise library? anything specific?
DmitriyN_MS (Expert):
Q: Regarding information about using the designers, the in-product Help is a better source than the documentation on MSDN online, which seems somewhat broken right now. 🙂
A: you are correct, Esther
Bill Gibson (Expert):
Q: In ACD, the Web Service box really represents a service while web services are represented by web service endpoints. This is a little awkward. Any thopughts about that?
A: ACD (now renamed Application Designer) models applications – atomically deployable entities. An ASP.NET application is an example of such an application and can offer a number of web service endpoints, each represented by an ASMX file. Note that the toolbox prototype is named ASP.NETWebService (because, it will add a web service endpoint by default) but in the beta 2 builds you’ll see that the application type on the diagram will show as ASP.NET application. This is a change from the beta1 drop. (You’ll see this in the Dec CTP). More generally, a user might combine web services to ensure that discrete services are always deployed/available together. Web services are also akin to interfaces, so the creation and use of carefully factored web services with standard services that might be provided by several applications will be a valuable approach. We support features to assit in that approach (cut and paste of endpoints and creation of endpoints from WSDL, for example.)
IanBa_MS (Expert):
Q: VSTS will provide integration with UML modelling software such as MS Visio or Rational Rose?
A: There will be no explicit integration between VSTA and UML tools such as Visio UML and Rational Rose (for example, you won’t be able to swap model info directly between the tools). However, if you have UML models in one these tools you can generate code for the model and the VSTA tools will be able to reverse engineer that code into a model.
AlexTorone_MS (Expert):
Q: Another issue tha I have is if it posible to a single Window Application (or other) template in the ACD to generate code to differente user interface such as WinForms and Pocket PC Forms?
A: If you provide your own custom template, you can drag and drop the windows applicaiton type from the toolbox, then in properties (before code generation or *implement*, you can specify you custom template.
DmitriyN_MS (Expert):
Q: Not technical but where did the name
A: It’s the name of my dog….Well, not really…
PedroSi_MS (Expert):
Q: What plans for tesing evnironments for web services? NUnit is nice, but it is not parallel. Maybe something like ACT test but for webservices will be very useful
A: This chat is about the VS Architect features. We’re not sure about the plan for testing features in Visual Studio are. The Visual Studio Team System have also had web chats you may want to check their archives to see if it answers your question. Or, they may be having an upcoming chat where you can get that answer.
IanBa_MS (Expert):
Q: Where can i find some video presentation about VSTS?
A: http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/teamsystem/teamcenters/architect/default.aspx has links to some demo videos.
PhilLee_MS (Expert):
Q: Will Beta 2 be compatible with Activie Directory on Win2k?
A: Uhh. I want to say so, but nobody in the room can confirm as we’re the
RobCaron_MS (Expert):
Q: Where can i find some video presentation about VSTS?
A: You can find a full listing of videos here: http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/teamsystem/technicalresources/presentations/default.aspx
PhilLee_MS (Expert):
Q: Is there any way to install Dec CTP VSTS without Active Directory?? By just using similar local domain users?? If there no way, is there any plans to make it able to install VSTS without Active Directory?
A: Well, we mostly install without active directory rather than with. though we do test it both ways. Maybe I don’t understand your question.
AlexTorone_MS (Expert):
Q: At the moment, you can use the system designer to look, if a planned system can be “docked” to an existing server. Is there any possibillity to ask the reverse question: Which systems do not longer work, if i change my hardware ?
A: Great question, the quick answer is not as well as we’d like 😉 Today you can model your system and your logical servers, write constraints then validate. If you change settings on your logical servers (you can do this manually by changing settings, or for IIS you can simply import/re-import your settings) you can re-run the validation and you’ll be able to see if you applicaiton still works. If you are referring to already deployed applicaitons on servers, we are thinking alot about that problem with the windows management team for future releases.
PhilLee_MS (Expert):
Q: Is there anything special done in VS to work with Enterpise Library?
A: can you be more specific about “enterprise library?” I’m not sure what that is.
Bill Gibson (Expert):
Q: I know you’ve heard the input before, but I’d really like to bemoan not having interface-first design for Web services. It was the biggest lesson we learned from COM. I’m not clear why the team missed that or chose other priorities. Any comments?
A: Yes, we’ve heard the input before
PedroSi_MS (Expert):
Q: Any thoughts on reverse enginering an architecture diagram for existing projects being migrated to VS2005? I know the class diagrams can be reverse enginered, I am asking about architecture diagrams!
A: The application diagram can be reverse engineered from an existing solution. We will place spaces on the diagram representing each project and any web service or database connections. There may have been issues in earlier releases of
DavidHo_ms (Expert):
Q: Hi guys, There are some similarities between Biztalk and the designer? Do you see them eventually merge as one product?
A: It’s interesting that you noticed the similarities. It turns out that sever folks on the
PhilLee_MS (Expert):
Q: Hi guys, There are some similarities between Biztalk and the designer? Do you see them eventually merge as one product?
A: It would be very premature to say at this point, however, the similarities are not lost on us… <g>
RobCaron_MS (Expert):
Q: Will the release date of SQL Server 2005 (
A: The plan of record is to ship SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 at the same time.
Bill Gibson (Expert):
Q: Hi guys, There are some similarities between Biztalk and the designer? Do you see them eventually merge as one product?
A: They will not merge as a single product but do expect us to tightly integrate BizTalk applications on the design surface. The AD depicts connections between applications but does not orchestrate over them – that’s not its purpose. Expect to be able to connect a BizTalk application to both the apps that call into the schedule to invoke it and to the services that it orchestrates. Imagine then double-clicking on this app to fire up the BizTalk orchestration designer to design the schedule.
AlexTorone_MS (Expert):
Q: Back to my question about Web Service toolbox prototype and Web Service endpoint. Will I see a difference in the toolbox (in Beta 2) between a form-based ASP.NET App and a Web Service-based ASP.NET App?
A: yes, you will see two prototypes in the toolbox, one for WebApplication and one for Web Service applicaiton. The reality is that they are both asp.net web applications. If you put webservice endpoints on it, that means your web application also exposes web services. We’ve added an new endpoint type called “web content” that says that your web application also exposes webcontent (eg: html pages, on webforms). The webapplication project is really the same in both cases, expect with web services you have asmx files too.
PedroSi_MS (Expert):
Q: Back to my question about Web Service toolbox prototype and Web Service endpoint. Will I see a difference in the toolbox (in Beta 2) between a form-based ASP.NET App and a Web Service-based ASP.NET App?
A: Yes, there are separate toolbox items for a ASP.NET app versus an ASP.NET web service app. However, you will still be able to convert a web app to a web service by adding a web service endpoint to it.
PhilLee_MS (Expert):
Q: How do you install it without Active Directory? Both the Application Tier and Data Tier without Active Directory? But the installation document only states how to install it USING Active Directory. So, how do we go about installing it?
A: Hang on. What type of installation are you attempting? Here, we’re installing machine by machine – one at a time. You sound like you are trying to push an installation out to a bunch of desktops simultaneously. The VS setup team does this type of work, but we don’t as a matter of routine.
PedroSi_MS (Expert):
Q: Does anyone of you wil be on the Charlotte Training on feb 14?
A: No.
Bill Gibson (Expert):
Q: Will be an integration with BizTalk Orchestration? (let me explain better, after a application was developed the diagrams tha I’ve made can be used to assist in an orchestration of sercices)
A: Yes,this is planned. See my earlier answer on BizTalk convergence.
IanBa_MS (Expert):
A: There are no plans to convert UML models to
DmitriyN_MS (Expert):
Q: For Paulo, in-product Help for Application Designer should be available for helping customers design SOA applications. In the Help’s Table of Contents, go to Enterprise Tools -> Distributed System Designers -> Getting Started.
PhilLee_MS (Expert):
Q: Wrt Enterprise Library, the OP is referring to the latest offering from patterns & practices
A: Now I understand the subject. We don’t have much expertise in teh room for this specifically, but we’re not doing anything special to work with those libraries/releases.
DmitriyN_MS (Expert):
Q: this thing really should either default to submit question, or at least give me the option of picking my default
A: I will let the developers of chat program know about this request
Bill Gibson (Expert):
Q: How can VSTS help me to design the SOA Boundaries of my application? Is there any documentation about design SOA Applications using VSTS?
A: There will be SOA design guidance provided as part of MSF methodologies to be shipped with VS 2005. This guidance will reference the use of VSTA tools. The tools do provide support for top-down system decomposition (although this is not a major scenario for this release). This will assist you design system interactions in the large before closing on on the details of specific services and assigning the behavior to specific applications.
ErbilY_MS (Expert):
Q: in the future, do you plan on adding version support & release planning integration into the designers?
A: Currently SDM Models support versioning. If you extend the SDM models which represent components in designers, Whitehorse Designers support different versions of components.
IanBa_MS (Expert):
Q: You say that you can convert UML models -> Code ->
A: There are no plans to convert UML models to
PhilLee_MS (Expert):
Q: The installation guide states that you need to set up an installation user and app/data tier user in your active directory. Can you do otherwise?
A: I’m sorry. It’s still early here in
DmitriyN_MS (Expert):
Q: I’d like to ask about extensibility of the new designers and tools into existing Systems auding, work item tracking and change management systems. Will the MSTS tools have hooks to allow this?
A: We are a part of Team System, so if you are talking about source control integration and work item traking – those are the items of Team System, but we support them as it pertains to our designers. What we mean by the term “extensibilitty”, however, is the ability of the user to create his/her own shapes, applications, logical servers, systems, resources and put them on our design surfaces
Bill Gibson (Expert):
Q: Is ther a way to transform one DSL/model to another?
A: You’re talking to the right team but our experts on that topic are not here right now. Take a look at Jochen Seeman’s blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/jochens
AlexTorone_MS (Expert):
Q: OK…But don’t you think that the decision to make asp.net solutions always websites, and not applications is an architecture decision??? I would think the asp.net team would work with you guys on that. I hate not having a project life file to track.
A: I didn’t catch the original response, but let me try anyway
DavidHo_ms (Expert):
Q: Is ther a plan to incorporate a .net 2.0 application blocks like library into the product? (i.e. Enterprise Library)
A: We are working with the Patterns and Practices (PAG) team on this. I don’t believe we will have tight integration with the PAG application blocks in the Whidbey release though.
PedroSi_MS (Expert):
Q: Any news on when MSF Formal will be made available?
A: Sorry, we don’t have any information about when that will be available.
IanBa_MS (Expert):
Q: Will there be any ways in VSTS (2005) to take UML models from e.g. Rationale ROSE as input into the design – or is this something that will be a manual process is this release?
A: We will not support direct transfer of models from Rational Rose to VSTS, but if you have generated code from your Rational Rose model we will be able to reverse engineer that code into a
PhilLee_MS (Expert):
Q: Okay. Thanks alot. I see what you mean. Is there anyone I can direct this question to? Because I’ve read in most blogs this cannot be done. Wondering if there’s any chance the Foundation Servers will just allow normal local domain users?
A: I’ll forward the notes from this chat to the TFS guys and they can get back you.
AlexTorone_MS (Expert):
Q: In terms of the infrastructure side of things, will VSTS be hooking into (in any way) the Security Config Wizard knowledge, so that you can apply best practice up front into the infrastructure side of the design?
A: Great question. We have not integrated that knowlege into the tool for this release. We are engaging with the security teams to discuss furture integrations. However, one could add *any* meta-data to existing or new logical server types with either custom settings or using the SDK. Once you have added that *knowlege* (eg: settings that contain the information you are looking for), you can write constraints, either user defined or custom (via the SDK). It’s not as integrated as you would like but its achievable with a bit of work.
Bill Gibson (Expert):
Q: I’m interested in high performance web services.Ccommon scenario is to ask service to perform some searching and return result. Ussually, client need those result few times afte this. Do you have some pattern to detect that search result wasn’t changed?
A: The focus of the VSTA release in VS2005 is to provide tools over the platform, not to extend that platform per se or to encode specific implementation patterns. You should talk to the patterns and practices group who are exploring this kind of topic and may be able to help you. See http://www.microsoft.com/resources/practices/default.mspx
DavidHo_ms (Expert):
Q: Seems like there are a lot of features in the pipeline for VSTS, beyond V.1. Any comments on when we’ll see them? .Net 2.1??
A: You are right – there are a lot of things we want to do in future releases. We will be working through prioritization over the next few months. If you have specific things you would like to see please log it on MSDN Feedback so we can weight it with other requests. Thanks.
PhilLee_MS (Expert):
Q: Well, VSTS’s Data Tier needs to be installed on another machine. And Applcation Tier needs to install on a seperate machine. Data Tier will ride on top on
A: Will pass this to the TFS guys for a response off-line…
Bill Gibson (Expert):
Q: In B1 there’s no support in the Class Designer for use (or dependency) relationship, only for associations and generalization. In an environment based on stateless objects, use relationship is much more common than the other two. Any thoughts?
A: Afraid this is off topic today. You could ask your question via this blog… http://blogs.msdn.com/r.ramesh
PedroSi_MS (Expert):
Q: Do you see any inherent conflict between using these designers and an agile methodology? Are we moving towards more agile datacenter design? This question came up the other day and baffled me, I’d be interested in your take on it.
A: We don’t see an inherent conflict with agile methodologies and our designers. You can layout the you application design in our diagram and generate your projects, but any changes you make in code will be round tripped back to the diagram, so if you add or change methods using agile methods they will be updated on the diagram.
IanBa_MS (Expert):
Q: Why is the default implementation language VB for implementing applications and not C#? Surely this a bug 😉
A: Not a bug – it was designed this way
DmitriyN_MS (Expert):
Q: Are the server types in the LDD hard typed or can they be extended? I may want to deploy applications that aren’t web apps or web services onto a web server box in order to work with what is already there but web servers only allow web app/services.
A: they can be extended in a number of ways: you can create a prototype with your specific server configuration and store it on your toolbox, you can add custom settings to it, you can design resources using our SDM SDK (coming in VSIP program, it is free), and, ultimately, you can design your own server (like MyTypeServer)
PedroSi_MS (Expert):
Q: Any interesting information you guys would like to volunteer about the designers?
A: They’re the best features of Visual Studio 2005.
DinaFes_MS (Expert):
Q: Are there going to be Design Patterns Templates just like Rational XDE provides ?
A: Hi Saurabh, If you can give me your email address, I can pass your questins onto team members working on recipe framework. They are not currently at this chat but may be able to answer your question.
RobCaron_MS (Expert):
Q: I’d like to ask about extensibility of the new designers and tools into existing Systems auding, work item tracking and change management systems. Will the MSTS tools have hooks to allow this?
A: Team Foundation provides an extensibility model for extending Team Foundation version control and work item tracking (see: http://blogs.msdn.com/brianwh/archive/2005/01/25/360401.aspx). Third parties can extend the capabilities of these tools, but substitution (“rip-n-replace”
PedroSi_MS (Expert):
Q: any way to have VB removed from the product all together??? Maybe have a Ture developers editions with c# and a Toy developers edition with VB
A: No, we plan to support all of the key .NET languages in our designers.
AlexTorone_MS (Expert):
Q: For an entity service (Fiefdom/Service Master), the database is given and also encapsulated by the service. It’s not available for anybody else. Should I still drag out a database prototype on the surface or abstract it within the service?
A: Great question and good catch. If you think of an application consisting of multiple interoperating services, and database might make sense to put on the diagram. If however you believe you want to completely encapsulate the service where data acces is inside, what you would need to do is drag an application type, lets use Web service, drag a database and connect them. Then create and explicit system, only expose the webservice endpoint from your system to the outside world. You can re-use this sytsem in your design. Remember the system is what you’ll eventually deploy, the application designer allows you to specify the types and thier connectiviety, the encapsulation is done in the system designer. (Right mouse click on the applicaiton diagram and select “design system”
PhilLee_MS (Expert):
Q: Can you guys name the one Killer feature of Team System Architect that we may not know???
A: Well, we think there are TONS of killer features, but here’s one that may not be known – Cassini support on the Application Designer. It wasn’t in B1 and might not be working well in the Dec CTP (it was not a very good build for us). This features allows development of IIS webs without having IIS installed. We got the word from customers that they really liked this and wanted us to support it — so we did…
Ed_H_MS (Moderator): This has been a great chat. Thank you to everyone for contributing. Unfortunately, it is time to go. Thanks for participating, and we’ll see you next time!
The transcript from today’s chat will be posted at http://www.msdn.microsoft.com/chats/recent.asp
Bill Gibson (Expert):
Q: how extensible is the VSTS??? If you guys do not deploy a Business process Modeller, could I have my team build one that plugs in?
A: In VS2005 the distributed system designers will support model extension, focusing initially on adding application types, server types, endpoint types and resource/settings definitions. In this release we have not been able to include all the designer hooks we wanted to. So while it will be possible to write add-ins that access the models, we will not want to promote the APIs that would be used to do that. An alternative approach might be to create SDM models as output from some other tools which could then be opened in the DSD tools. I’d be interested off-line in understanding more about what you have in mind and what level of extensibility/integration you’d need.
Bill Gibson (Expert):
Q: When can we expect more support for business process modelling and mapping business processes to services? Or does this compete too much with BizTalk?
A: We will be looking at that as part of our next release planning.
ErbilY_MS (Expert):
Q: How much interaction do you foresee the infrastructure architect having in the design process using these tools. They might be responsible for creating the LDD
A: Using validation feature, LDDs and Applications are validated against each other which provides feedback to both application side and logical datacenter side.