Power commands for Visual Studio 2008

PowerCommands 1.1 is a set of useful extensions for the Visual Studio 2008 adding additional functionality to various areas of the IDE. The source code is included and requires the VS SDK for VS 2008 to allow modification of functionality or as a reference to create additional custom PowerCommand extensions. Visit the VSX Developer Center at http://msdn.com/vsx for more information about extending Visual Studio.

For a list of features look here.

If this is for you you can download it here.

Domain specific language - Primer

Perhaps you may have seen this term in VS2008 when it loads up on the start screen or perhaps you have seen it in some academic course of study, or perhaps you have no idea what it is!! Well this short post will hopefully give you some answers to what it is, why you need it and how to get started using it.


What is it?
Well firstly it is not a GPL, a general purpose language like VB.NET,C# or any other programming language that lets you code using a specific language to suite a diverse set of tasks. It’s actually the other way round, it’s useful for a specific task to fix a problem within that domain. Using it allows you to build a modeling tool or define a modeling language for that task. It also makes implementing the solution to that problem a lot easier, however it does shift a lot of the work up front. i.e developing the tool is hard work, but once it’s built it’s a lot easier to solve problems using it!!! Domain-specific languages focus on doing one kind of task well. It’s kinda like UML, but without the U. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-specific_programming_language


What can you do with it?
For example, you can create a specialized language that describes a user interface, a business process, a database, or the flow of information, and then you can generate code from those descriptions. The DSL does not have to fit just IT or programming tasks, you may wish to model other things like solar systems. By using Domain-Specific Language Tools, you can create a custom graphical designer that uses your Domain-specific diagram notation. You can then create custom text templates that use models that are created in your designer to generate source code and other files.
What tools are there out there?

What does the VS2008 DSL tool consist of ?
· A project wizard that creates a fully configured solution. In this solution, you can define a domain model that consists of a designer and a text output generator. If you run a completed solution from inside Visual Studio, a test solution opens in a separate instance of Visual Studio so that you can test the designer and the text output generator.

· A graphical designer for defining and editing domain models.

· Designer definitions in XML. The code for implementing designers is generated from these definitions so that you can define a graphical designer hosted in Visual Studio without manually writing any code.

· A set of code generators, which take a domain model definition and a designer definition as input and produce code that implements both of the components as output. The code generators also validate the domain model and the designer definition, and they raise errors and warnings accordingly.
· A framework for defining text output generators. These template-based generators take data (models) that use a domain model as input and generate text output that is based on the template. Parameters in the template are substituted by using the results of running a Visual C# script that is embedded in the template.


What VS editions support DSL
For creating a DSL you will need any of the following:
· Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
· Visual Studio 2008 Team Edition for Software Architects
· Visual Studio 2008 Team Edition for Software Developers
· Visual Studio 2008 Team Edition for Software Testers
· Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite

In order to use the DSL you create you will need on of the following VS IDE’s@
· Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition
· Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
· Visual Studio 2008 Team Edition for Software Architects
· Visual Studio 2008 Team Edition for Software Developers
· Visual Studio 2008 Team Edition for Software Testers
· Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite

OK so not much choice, you can’t use VS2005 or 2003 I’m afraid.

OK enough already! How do I create a DSL? That will be the topic of my next post!!

Adding a WebReference to a Windows Forms Application in VS2008

I'm on a blog posting frenzy this week, since I'm not training :) What with country elections rapidly approaching this weekend!!

So adding a webreference was very straight forward in VS2005, just right click the project and select Add WebReference.

In VS2008 it is still easy if you are making the reference from a Website ASP.NET app, but try and do it from Windows!!! This is usually one of my favourite demos to show how VS makes it so easy for a windows forms to consume data server across the web. Well we all know that SOA is upon us and so the asnwer is in just that. Ideally we would have a WCF app to consume, not the Webservice directly.

We could go down this route but I will save that for another post ;) To do it the 'old way' we start with a right click on the project and select Add Service Reference. You should now see a new window like this.

Two options exist: The WS way or the WCF way.

• Clicking Discover will find the Webservice in the solution and create a Service reference that must be consumed via the WCF route.
• The other way is to click Advanced at the bottom and then select WebService. The rest should be very familiar!!
  
  
  
  
  What's really interesting is that fact that once you have one WebService Reference you can now do it the old way!!! Right click and you get the image below !!
  
  
  

Heros Happen {Here} : Virtual Launch!

Yesterday was a great day for Microsoft and for some MCT's!! We had the chance to participate in a 24hr Virtual launch that was seen by people all over the world. Starting on Wednesday 28th Feb at 12 pm PST, Steve Ballmer launched a new wave of products that would dramatically change the way software developers go about their work. His keyote was supplimented with the kick off of the 24hr virtual launch presented by about 20 MCT's from around the world who delivered a 1hr session through live meeting that was free to attend and repeated 24 times!! The recorded sessions can now be viewed again and there is still the chance to get a two hour free online virtual clinic form here too. Scroll down the page for the live meeting recordings. If you didn't get the chance to attend you can also download the slides for the event too.

Project 'SilverlightProject1' could not be opened because the Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 compiler could not be created. Unable to find required file

I've been working fine with Silverlight under my VS 2005 installation but recently I said I'd start doing that work in VS2008. So I installed the Silverlight tools for VS2008 and found a nice new project template for Silverlight projects and class libraries. I clicked it and got a nice Error:

Project 'SilverlightProject2' could not be opened because the Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 compiler could not be created. Unable to find required file 'mscorlib.dll'.

So I hunted around the web and ended up on ScottGu's blog, surprise:) Some said ditch VB.NET and use C#. Sure enough the C# project worked fine, grrrr. So I uninstalled Silverlight 1.0 and tried the Silverlight 1.1 alpha September refresh. Guess what all is OK. Works a charm in VB.NET.

Vista Sidebar Gadget - Countdown to "2008 Global Launch Wave"

Since our user group will be hosting the Global Launch Wave 2008 I figured it woul be usefull for people to keep track of the launch. Turns out someone has already created a Vista gadget to do just that! It counts down the number of days until the "2008 Global Launch Wave" which will start on wednesday February 27th 2008. Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 will then all be launched. Follow the link here

VS 2008 - Getting Started (Mult-targeting)

So, first things first!! I downloaded the RTM of VS 2008 Profssional iso, burnt it to a DVD and installed. No problems so far on my Vista Desktop :)

So for the next few weeks I'll show you what's new and why you can get onto this new product as soon as possible. I've seen a great session by Daniel Moth at TechEd Developers two weeks ago and so I will be using his tour tips in this series too. I'm telling you if you get a chance to go to any of his sessions, GO! He packs 150mins in 75 mins and sometimes you have to play it back again at half speed :)

So for this first session whats new?!

Firstly Multi-Targeting. What this basically does is allow you to say, hmmm this solution will be based on .NET Framework 2.0, or 3.0 or 3.5. THen what happens is the IDE removes all features not related to the selected target .NET framework. So if you chose 2.0, all the WPF stuff goes away. So perhaps you start with 3.0, and after a time, having used some 3.0 stuff by accident :) you flip back to 2.0? Well the IDE will flag all the 3.0 stuff that will no longer work!! Cool!!!

So this is most definitely the first most important thing you will see, and also a great selling point for you to ask your boss to upgrade and possibly not use VS2005 any more. Since you can still target those apps selectively and work on other projects for 3.5 all with the same great tool.

Visual Studio 2008 RTM now available for download

Atleast for MSDN subscribers anyway.

As of yesterday you can now download the following versions from here:

• VS 2008 Professional
• VS 2008 Standard
• VS 2008 Express
• VS 2008 Team suite and foundation server (Trials)

The rest should be coming soon, atleast before the end of the month, as promised at TechEd Developers 2008 :)

PS Don't forget to turn off your popup blocker or you won't be able to download the files :)

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 - Part 1

Well it's starting to get exciting now that MS have dropped the 'Orcas' Code name and gone Beta 2 wit VS2008. Naturally I was on the download straight away, and just so as to save time I down loaded the Team Suite Virtual Hard disk. I loaded it up in Virtual Server 2005 R2 on my HP nc8430 Laptop with 2GB Ram and gave the VM 1GB. After linking the downloaded vhd to my base01.vhd I got the VM up and now it's time to play and see what's new.

Expect part 2 shortly :)