I keep *waiting* for Guidance Automation to prosper (outside of the insular world of Microsoft at least). But after a number of releases, I still see that the *main* site for GAT receives less than 10 posts a week. It just doesn't seem like any of us are jumping off buildings for this.
So, my question is, why is Microsoft, after 2 years of this, and so few recipes (never mind that design done in VS2005 is throwaway for VS2008), not putting more resources into the recipes and such? *No* programmer or architect I know, would work with a template framework like GAT, if there are no Object-Relational recipes/templates. And boy, if there are, someone is doing a great job of hiding them.
I am about to automate an architecture we've been working on--my choices are Codesmith Studio (at least for the OR, how hard can it be for Microsoft to expend some resources on this?), or MyGeneration, or create form-based wizards. I can't see the point of designing templates and recipes for VS2005, when I have ZERO assurance from Microsoft that this work will carry over--never mind that I cannot find a web sites *ANYWHERE* in the world, where anyone is showing a lot of interest in GAT and GAX.
IMO, Microsoft is putting the cart before the horse here. If you want us to participate, we need to have a benefit for doing so. You obviously have not offered that yet. Ergo, few recipes, no templates, no tutorials (heck, your tutorials THREAD of one year age has TWO PAGES of posts!!!, and you want *us* architects to adapt this?)
I'm not trying to spam--I'm really trying to find someone at Microsoft that is able to look over the wall, and see that LINQ and GAT and GAX have hit us w/a whisper and we'd like to know when and if we should ever
| | aaava Wednesday, November 14, 2007 10:39 PM | Hi aaava,
By the text of your subject it looks like you may not be getting what GAX is about. Broadly comparing GAX against CodeSmith is not really an useful comparison...
GAX is not a template framework like you mention, GAX uses the T4 technology for text template generation as DSL Tools use. And it is for this part only that you may want to compare it against CodeSmith. What are the main PROs/CONs of each one that I see here:
T4 PROs: workstation license -> free; no additional download/installation required -> built-in the box (starting from VS2008) , royalty-free redist.
T4 CONs: poor design-time experience (which is something you may fix by downloading tools like the one my company makes: http://www.t4editor.net)
(from last time I checked, couple of months ago)
CodeSmith PROs: rich design-time experience.
CodeSmith CONs: workstation license -> paid; additional download/install; redist-license -> expensier and not that clear last time I checked; design-time experience is 'standalone' and not integrated into VS (or poor VS integration).
But this is just one of the areas covered by GAX. The more important one, where CodeSmith won't help at all as it is not part of its business, is integration whithin Visual Studio. How do you extend VS today?
- GAX package
- VS addin
- VSIP package
Depending on your needs GAX can save you TONS of time by for example allowing you to do things declaratively that would otherwise take several lines of code and write against an abstraction layer that hides many cumbersome VS specific. This may not be easy to appreciate unless you've done written any previous VSIP package before, when you do, you will feel the real pain that this may get to. And GAX eases that pain quite well in some areas.
Regarding the attention that GAX is getting or not getting, again, not sure against what are you comparing this...? No, it's obviously not, and won't never be as popular as say... ASP.net... but it has got it's share of attention as you can check here the number of SF downloads at the beginning of 2007 (http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2007/01/26/software-factories-100-000-served.aspx) and also you can check the SF specific websites, like Services Factory in codeplex (http://www.codeplex.com/servicefactory/Thread/List.aspx) whose posted questions usually overlaps GAX topics. Moreover, there are GAX-related session on TechEds and other conferences, there is the p&p summit, etc. Granted, nothing popular as other techs as Asp.Net of course, but I don't think you can call this 'hidden' either...
Lastly, but not least, Clarius (which I work for -biased, biased, biased!-) developed this SFT (http://softwarefactoriestoolkit.net) which has passed the 10k downloads since the beginning of this year now and it's generating lots of business from medium/large companies who are already using GAX.
-Victor.
| | vga Thursday, November 15, 2007 12:27 PM | Hi aaava,
By the text of your subject it looks like you may not be getting what GAX is about. Broadly comparing GAX against CodeSmith is not really an useful comparison...
GAX is not a template framework like you mention, GAX uses the T4 technology for text template generation as DSL Tools use. And it is for this part only that you may want to compare it against CodeSmith. What are the main PROs/CONs of each one that I see here:
T4 PROs: workstation license -> free; no additional download/installation required -> built-in the box (starting from VS2008) , royalty-free redist.
T4 CONs: poor design-time experience (which is something you may fix by downloading tools like the one my company makes: http://www.t4editor.net)
(from last time I checked, couple of months ago)
CodeSmith PROs: rich design-time experience.
CodeSmith CONs: workstation license -> paid; additional download/install; redist-license -> expensier and not that clear last time I checked; design-time experience is 'standalone' and not integrated into VS (or poor VS integration).
But this is just one of the areas covered by GAX. The more important one, where CodeSmith won't help at all as it is not part of its business, is integration whithin Visual Studio. How do you extend VS today?
- GAX package
- VS addin
- VSIP package
Depending on your needs GAX can save you TONS of time by for example allowing you to do things declaratively that would otherwise take several lines of code and write against an abstraction layer that hides many cumbersome VS specific. This may not be easy to appreciate unless you've done written any previous VSIP package before, when you do, you will feel the real pain that this may get to. And GAX eases that pain quite well in some areas.
Regarding the attention that GAX is getting or not getting, again, not sure against what are you comparing this...? No, it's obviously not, and won't never be as popular as say... ASP.net... but it has got it's share of attention as you can check here the number of SF downloads at the beginning of 2007 (http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2007/01/26/software-factories-100-000-served.aspx) and also you can check the SF specific websites, like Services Factory in codeplex (http://www.codeplex.com/servicefactory/Thread/List.aspx) whose posted questions usually overlaps GAX topics. Moreover, there are GAX-related session on TechEds and other conferences, there is the p&p summit, etc. Granted, nothing popular as other techs as Asp.Net of course, but I don't think you can call this 'hidden' either...
Lastly, but not least, Clarius (which I work for -biased, biased, biased!-) developed this SFT (http://softwarefactoriestoolkit.net) which has passed the 10k downloads since the beginning of this year now and it's generating lots of business from medium/large companies who are already using GAX.
-Victor.
| | vga Thursday, November 15, 2007 12:27 PM | I know it's been a while since you posted, but I thought I'd let you know about another template-driven code generation product that might suit your needs: Viewpoints ( http://www.gnomzsoftware.com/viewpoints/) is a model-driven code generation platform that integrates with Visual Studio .NET 2008. It supports customizable template-driven code generation with multi-file output support. | | Graham Sibley Friday, September 12, 2008 3:31 AM |
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