Jim Lavin’s Blog

I am proud to present the first episode of Industry Vertical the twice monthly net cast about industrializing software development with Software Factories, Guidance Automation and Domain Specific Languages at http://tinyurl.com/aamnov. This episode starts out with the basics of Software Factories and trys to answer the question “What is a Software Factory”.

I’ve decided to try my hand at webcasting. I’m in the stages of preparing a webcast series around using software factories, guidance automation and domain-specific languages called Industry Vertical. I’m planning on taking it slow starting out by providing some introductory material around what software factories are, their benefits and their life-cycle. Then I’ll take everyone step by step building out a software factory from the ground up. I’m hoping this will help everyone out there get started in industrializing software development.

So far, I’ve spent the last month getting my scripts together, creating graphics, setting up a new web site, purchasing audio equipment and I just found a great deal on a Sony HVR-A1 High Definition Camcorder, so once it arrives I’ll be ready to get down to business and start recording the first episode.

Hopefully, my busy work schedule will stay out of the way long enough to keep releases to a regular interval, but we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

Here’s a handy tip when you are trying to learn how the components of the Service Factory works. I’ve found it very useful over the last couple of weeks.

Since the Service Factory now gets registered under the Visual Studio Experimental Hive you can configure the solution so you can debug it. If you are familiar with debugging DSLs, this should be nothing new. Just follow the steps below:

1. 1. Set the Service Factory Guidance Package as the Start-Up Project by right-clicking on the project and selecting “Set as Start-Up Project”.
2. 2. Change the Service Factory Guidance Package Project’s debug settings to launch Visual Studio under the Experimental Hive:
   1. 1. a. Right click on the Service Factory Guidance Package Project and select “Properties”.
   2. b. Select the Debug Tab
   3. c. Configure the Start Action to Start External Program and C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe or where ever you have installed Visual Studio for the program.
   4. d. Set the Start Options, Command Line Arguments to /rootsuffix Exp

Now you can set breakpoints in the Service Factory code and press F5 to walk through the code in the debugger.