Random outpourings of a software developer
The following is an example of late binding:
Type objClassType;
object objApp_Late;
objClassType = Type.GetTypeFromProgID(“VisualStudio.DTE.8.0”);
objApp_Late = Activator.CreateInstance(objClassType);
Visual Studio is a combine harvester of an IDE. It performs so mant functions that it is easy to get lost.
I started sting to write an extension to VS.NET to allow me to use the command-line from within VS. I was trying to use the VSIP to add a managed window. Partway through the listed steps it asked me to look at the View | Other Windows menu. I could not find the window that I had defined but I did find the follwing:
The call browser could be worth future investigation.
Object Test Bench allows objects to be created from the IDE. This could be great for ad-hoc testing. (Although I typically used the TestDriven.NET which allows the test this method or test with debugger).
The Command Window looks much more useful. It contains a wonderful set of commands and is user-extensible. I can see this becoming really useful.
Here is the list of available commands.
It is a good sign when different teams are attempting to solve the same problem.
The Castle Project has its new Generator contrib project. This is an easy to use extensible code template system written in BOO with asp.net style templates. BOO is a hybrid of Python and C# with some ideas from the Ruby world.
Microsoft has the Guidance Toolkit. This allows the Visual Studio IDE to expanded with macros and recepies.
Both of these approaches are attempts to implement Software Factories, allowing developers to raise the abstraction and reuse. This can only be a good thing. Hopefully one or both will survive.
In a recent HanselMinutes Scott stated that “a Word document can’t break a build”.
This is not quite true. Using FIT it is possible to have a word document that does break the build.
FIT allows tests to be written in a word document by the business users and be run as a test by developers.
FIT can be found at FIT.C2.com
This is an article on code generation of stored procedures with examples.
Here is the main outline of the stored procedure generation template
<xsl:stylesheet version=”1.0″ xmlns:xsl=”http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform”>
<xsl:output method=”text” standalone=”yes”>
<xsl:preserve-space elements=”row”>
<xsl:template match=”/”>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:preserve-space>
</xsl:output>
!— BODY
This is how to construct the insert body.
INSERT INTO <xsl:value-of select=”$name”> (<xsl:for-each select=”columns/row”>
<xsl:value-of select=”@COLUMN_NAME”>
<xsl:if test=”position() != last()”>, </xsl:if>
</xsl:value-of>)
VALUES (<xsl:for-each select=”columns/row”>@<xsl:value-of select=”@COLUMN_NAME”>
<xsl:if test=”position() != last()”>, </xsl:if>
</xsl:value-of>)
</xsl:for-each></xsl:for-each></xsl:value-of>
With this as a stub it will be easy to create the script.
This article describes how to add ProgIds to a C# App an expose it as a COM dll.
The key feture was this line.
[GuidAttribute("1F2A0E29-1934-4E2F-8E25-89467D68F3A9"), ProgId("Leszynski.InSpireAddin")]
The article also includes registration details.
MSBuild and the code generation techniques of Kathleen Dollard seem to fit together very naturally.
MSBuild is a blatant clone of NAnt with the benefit of being the native project file format of VS2005.
Kathleen Dollard promotes the use of code generation (generated code = meta data + templates) using XSLT.
Kathleen has a complex code generation harness that provides configurable one touch code generation.
I feel that this would be more naturally implemented as a set of MsBuild/Nant extensions.
For example the Database Metadata extraction tool would be one task. Stored procedure generation would be another. Code to call the stored procedures would be a third. This would provide the one touch benefit of the generation framework yet allow the pieces to become far more flexible.
Developer Rants 