Gerardo de Geest

Evolution in Microsoft DSL-Tools - Part 2

gerardo.de.geest — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:29:00 GMT

As a follow up to my previous blog post, many people have asked me for a demo of the tooling. Well, here it is :) The attached zip file includes a wmv file with a screencapture and some of my comments. The demo is performed using the datacontract DSL of Microsoft Web Service Software Factory Modeling edtion. The model is migrated from the beta 117 version to the final version of WSSF.

This demo shows you the following:

A model build using version beta 117 is not viewable in the final version. It is also not possible to generate code in the final version.
The DSLCompare tool is able to analyze two DSL definitions and create a mapping between them automatically. The mapping is stored in an XML file.
The ConverterGenerator tool takes the mapping XML file as an input and generates a Visual Studio solution with the C# code for the converter.
The C# code can be compiled without making any changes to it.
The converter is able to convert the model created in version beta 117 to a model that is visible in the final version of WSSF.
All these steps are completed within 10 minutes.

I hope you'll enjoy the demo :)

Evolution in Microsoft DSL-Tools

gerardo.de.geest — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:46:00 GMT

Finally it's there! It has taken me about a year to write this masters thesis, but now you can read it. I've been working on the evolution of DSL definitions created using Microsoft DSL-Tools. Your DSL definitions will change eventually, but what happens to your models?

You can find the thesis in the attachment of this post. It describes the approach I have used to give developers support for converting their models. Even an implementation is described and the approach is evaluated using three case studies. And it turns out that the approach works in practice!

The attachment also includes a Visual Studio solution. This includes an F# implementation of the transformation language that is also described in the thesis. The solution also includes a C# project to test the implementation. This is a nice example of how you can combine F# and C# in your projects. I know you would like to see the testing in T# and hopefully I'll be able to post that soon for you here :)

Dutch Imagine Cup semi-finals

gerardo.de.geest — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 09:13:00 GMT

Yesterday I was present at the Dutch Imagine Cup semi-finals. I have some very cool projects and the level of the projects was really high.

For instance, the team from Rotterdam made a game with XNA. Very original idea and a cool demo! More info on their project can be found here: http://guardianofeden.nl/

Another team I remember is the team from Delft. They use Volta technology! Their idea is to create a social network in which people can see their "greendex". They are going to use smart energy meters that are expected to be in every Dutch house by 2012. These meters can be polled every 15 minutes to get the amount of energy used during the last 15 minutes. Very cool idea, but they didn't have a demo yet... More info on http://www.greengrasp.net/

The other teams that progressed to the Dutch finals are from Utrecht, Tilburg/Eindhoven, Enschede and Almere. Good luck guys and girls!

Pictures of the day can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/pbruin/HalveFinaleImagineCupNederland2008

Presentation about Volta

gerardo.de.geest — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:01:00 GMT

Two days ago I presented Volta to my collegues in Avanade Netherlands. And guess what: You can see this presentation online now :) Unfortunately the presentation is in Dutch, so I hope you can understand what I'm saying... There is a lot of coding in it as well, so you'll be able to understand most of it anyway :)

These are the topics that I cover:
- The hello world example that can be downloaded from labs.live.com/volta as well
- How to do F# with Volta and it actually works :)
- How Volta compiles to javascript. I show C# to MSIL and MSIL to javascript
- How Volta manages to get cool graphics without silverlight.

You can find the presentation here: http://www.viddler.com/avatube/videos/25/

Avanade Netherlands releases WSSF EntLib Extensions

gerardo.de.geest — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 08:18:00 GMT

Avanade Netherlands yesterday released some extenstions to WSSF on codeplex: www.codeplex.com/EntLibExtensionsWSSF . This extensions allows you use some of the EntlLib features, like Exception Shielding, Logging and Caching in WSSF.

All credits go to David Slot and Gerben van Loon who created this very cool asset!

Welcome to my blog

gerardo.de.geest — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:35:00 GMT

Hey everyone! Welcome to my blog. I've decided to start blogging as well, because it seems other people start blogging about me :)

At the moment, I'm still an intern at Avanade. Once I'm graduated, I'll become a solution developer at Avanade.

For the past year, I've been doing some work on DSL's and evolution of these DSLs. Together with two Avanade employees, I've written a paper about my research. I presented this paper together with my Finish collegue Aali Alikoski at the DSM workshop at OOPSLA in Montreal 2007. The paper can be found here: http://www.dsmforum.org/events/DSM07/papers/geest.pdf .

Furthermore, together with a Dutch collegue, Gerben van Loon, I've written an article in MSDN magazine about Microsofts Service Factory Modeling Edition. It can be found here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc164250.aspx

I'm also helping four students from Delft University of Technology with their Bachelor project about Volta. So, I think their will be plenty of cool stuff to blog about and I hope you will enjoy reading my blog posts in the future.