Domain-Specific Development with Visual Studio DSL Tools

Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs)--languages geared to specific vertical or horizontal areas of interest--are attracting growing excitement from software engineers and architects. DSLs bring new agility to the creation and evolution of system requirements and simplify their translation into code, significantly reducing development costs in large-scale projects. In this breakthrough book, four leading experts reveal exactly how DSLs work, and how you can make the most of them in your environment. You'll begin by mastering DSL concepts and techniques that apply to all platforms. Next, 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 Microsoft DSL Tools integrate into Visual Studio 2005--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 The book's companion Web site (www.domainspecificdevelopment.com) includes code samples, plus additional resources and information.

Steve Cook is a software architect in the Enterprise Frameworks and Tools group at Microsoft Gareth Jones, DSL Tools Lead Developer, has been at Microsoft since 1997 Stuart Kent joined Microsoft in 2003 as a program manager to work on the DSL Tools Alan Cameron Wills was a methodology consultant for nearly a decade before joining Microsoft in 2003