DSL Tools support for Visual Studio editions
I promised that I'd get back to this forum with details of our licensing plan once they were available.
I'm pleased to say that we can now make some details available
(Please also see ourModeling Strategy and FAQ).
On release, the DSL Tools for Visual Studio 2005 will be part of the Visual Studio 2005 SDK.
We'll support the following editions for authoring DSLs:
Visual Studio Professional EditionVisual Studio Team Edition for Software ArchitectsVisual Studio Team Edition for Software DevelopersVisual Studio Team Edition for Software TestersVisual Studio Team SuiteWe'll support the following editions for deploying the DSLs that you build:
Visual Studio Standard EditionVisual Studio Professional EditionVisual Studio Team Edition for Software ArchitectsVisual Studio Team Edition for Software DevelopersVisual Studio Team Edition for Software TestersVisual Studio Team SuiteGareth Jones
This is excellent news! Being able to deploy to Standard Edition is great. Thanks
I am very disappointed by this news. Can you please explain further why the design of DSLs requires Professional or above? Why can this not be done in Standard Edition?
If DSLs are really a key part of Software Factories, and thus part of the Dynamic System Initiative, then shouldn't they be targeted at the broadest base possible? Why must I be able to afford the $700+ Professional Edition if I want to learn more about DSLs as a hobbyist, perhaps as a precursor to using it in the industry (which is precisely my situation)?
I have VSTS at work, but only Standard at home, and I was really hoping I would be able to learn about and study the DSL tools at home.
I'd just be interested to know what caused these seemingly excellent tools, part of a larger Microsoft strategy, to be put beyond the reach of the casual or home developer.
I'm disapointed that you need Visual Studio at all to run a deployed DSL. If the idea is truly to promote good practice via DSL then why not allow us to extend that to our own applications? I'm quite happy with the authoring restrictions, that makes sense but you wouldn't expect to have a Visual Studio licence to view an aspx site would you? IMO the Workflow team seem to have a much better idea by allowing the entire process to be hosted outside of VS.
:(
Hi Dr. Borts
I'm sorry to hear you're disappointed with these decisions.
For learning features specific to higher versions of Visual Studio at home, can I point you in the direction of
http://www.tryvs2005.com
You can get a 90-day trial edition of VS Professional Edition or a 180 day trial edition of Team Suite there, which hopefully should be enough to be able to learn a lot about these technologies.
I'm aware of the free trials, but my question is really - can someone from Microsoft, in particular the DSL Tools team, explain what the reasoning is behind putting these in the Professional-and-up realm, and not including Standard. Is there any technical reason, or is it all just a matter of what type of user they're targeted at?
Hi Dr Borts,
I'm from the DSL Tools team.
There isn't a technical reason why the tools aren't available in Standard. As you say, different versions of Visual Studio are designed with different sorts of users in mind. We looked at the type of user we were targetting and it is very much a software professional who is looking to move her organisation or her customer's organisation towards more productive and more industrialized development using techniques within the Software Factories initiative.
We're aware however that bringing models as first class artefacts into the development process means that there will be categories of users who will be being asked to use Visual Studio for the first time, specifically to make use of a DSL-created designer, (perhaps a business analyst). Customers told us that forcing such a person to have Pro installed didn't make sense if they were ONLY using it for the DSL-created designer, hence the ability to deploy DSL-created designers into Standard.
I hope this makes some of our thinking clearer.
But if the Workflow team allow us to host the designer without VS, why not the DSL team?
I should also address pkr2000's point about hosting outside of Visual Studio in the manner allowed by the Windows Workflow team.
We've heard several times from customers that they'd like more hosting options for their DSL designers. This is something we considered for V1, but in the end we decided to focus our non-VS efforts on the scenario of accessing model data from non-VS programs as this seemed the most critical need for integrating models into existing tooling workflows.
It's likely that we'll look again at this issue in future taking customer feedback into account.
Gareth,
I believe your explaination is clear enough.
However there is in many cases going to be a class of user that will require the features of a DSL designer combined with Team Explorer or even just a source code control package.
As I understand the technology the Visual Studio shell provides a set of services of use to plug-in packages, and the packages provide the services used by developers.
Commercially it looks like the VS shell can be licensed by VSIP members to allow us deliver a product that comprises the shell and a package, but that option is not available to DSL-based packages.
Interestingly, looking back at the transcript of the online chat in May '05 Jochen Seemann said he expected this to be permitted.
I know this is probably outside your area, but I'd appreciate if you could pass on to the powers that be that the current licensing rules will restrict the market for VSIP members' products by making them more expensive than necessary.
Ideally we'd like to be able to distribute
1: a product that includes a licensed VS shell and a DSL package.
2: a DSL package that could be installed in any licensed VS shell, including products like Team Explorer or the SQL Server management tools.
I'd not be upset if that excluded free VS shells like the express editions. If some people are unwilling or unable to buy any of the Microsoft products that include a VS shell, then they will probably not buy our product either.
I think to insist that an analyst or designer purchase Standard Edition, when they won't be doing any code work, is not helpful.
Thanks,
Brian.
Thanks Brian (and Pkr2000 and Dr Borts.)
I will most certainly make sure this becomes part of the input next time we revisit these decision points.
Hi Gareth.
Is there any news on behalf of the hosting of DSL's in custom applications?
I'm in need of such a functionality. If anyone knows of a way, however hard, I'd be grateful to hear about it!
HI Chris,
Right now, this would still require becoming a member of the "Premier Partner Membership" level of the VSIP program in order to gain access to redistribute the Premium Partner Edition of Visual Studio and chunk of custom coding (which we've not had a chance to prove out ourselves yet).
We're not in a position at this time to support our customers in hosting a DSL in arbitrary custom applications (only accessing the model data in arbitrary apps).
Thanks Gareth!
I'll wait with incorporating DSL into our applications. Would you say that until then, the Visio controls offer a good alternative to give our clients process-drawing capabilities in a custom windows forms application?
Chris
Hi Chris
I'm afraid that I've no experience of using Visio as a set of controls, so I couldn't comment on how well it works in that senario (or on what their licensing terms are). I'll update this thread once there is any news one way or the other for future versions.
