http://rational.devx.com/index.htm/content_id/5997
Grady booch - '.NET will change your life!'
One of the most influential language method leaders explain how .NET has fundamentally changing the way developers work.
Author: Stuart J. Johnston
Since the establishment of the company since 1980, GRADY BOOCH is the main theoretical software scientist. It is one of the initial developers of Unified Model Language (UML). Therefore, he is special in the continuous development of programming language, tools and methodology - from machine language and component language, Cobol and Fortran and ADA to C, C , and Java - the status is special.
Now, because Microsoft should use its .NET to promote the development of the world to further develop, it enters a world of distributed web services, Rational naturally fills the voids and provides developers to maximize the use of Web service models. tool.
Microsoft has ambitious NET initial actions to provide many developers for establishing a basic tool for web services. This includes NET frameworks, generic language runtime, set libraries, new C # programming languages, a new version of Microsoft integrated development environment and language named Visual Studio .NET.
For upgrade needs
But although Microsoft provides tools for preliminary actions, this is no means that all developers need to develop forward. why? Because as the world turns to a highly distributed model, the application's flexibility is growing, and the developer needs tools that can be extended across the network.
".NET will change your life because it actually represents another way of developing applications." Booch said, "In the past, considering large enterprise system banking systems or retail systems, the development team must put all Things are built on their own operating system. "
That is to say, developers must constantly use the procedures and management resources to prepare the set of the required basic architecture. Middleware and transport layer technology such as COM and COM simplify the complexity of these technologies, but what these technologies are still needed to work.
"NET is actually the specification code through type service, each enterprise application uses and delivers these services in a final developer, and it is easy to obtain these services ..NET enhances the abstraction level for the application builders. Make them can build on the basis of their own creation in the past. "Booch said," This is a good thing, because they can now concentrate on increasing value, and they have experience in the field, without having to Build all the basic architectures. "
However, there is still different differences between the actual demand between Microsoft's basic architecture and tools and developers to create next-generation applications. "In the past, if there is no thousands of projects in the past, our experience is to get the best practice ... visual model, control change, etc. ..., this is where our tools actually exist."
In this regard, since .NET has emerged, Rational Rational's highly integrated statement on it in approximately 15 months ago. Last spring, Rational announced that all of its development cycle tools actually integrated into Visual Studio. Net, including demand analysis, visual model, modification, and configuration management and testing.
The Rational's QUANTIFY® performance modeling and PURECOVERAGE® code coverage and test tool are already available in the ß version of Visual Studio .NET, they will also contain IDE in the future release. The company has announced that Rational Suite will also support .NET.
It is expected to change fundamental changes in development
However, porting to the web service model is not just reducing the demand for your own architecture, increasing abstraction and complexity. Applications Turn from the user desktop to the Internet, ultimately the development process changes fundamentally. For example, since the so-called "joint" service - application is constituted by components running on different server-side, even different developers are available - often located in different locations, the developer is often such. Frequently a virtual development team is located in different locations and different time zones. At least, this makes it difficult to arrange and manage meetings. Therefore, it is necessary to develop collaboration tools to deal with these differences.
In addition, developing applications in new environments not only increases the needs of development team, but also requires work to work on the development team.
"After you start understanding .NET, due to continuous changes, you will feel quite complicated, and continuous changes means you will get a web-centered application with different rates." Booch said, "interface Part, middleware parts, and the rear end portion will change at different rates. This means that in the development cycle, you must do more things at the same time, you must have multiple stable distributions, especially when your customers The foundation is quite large. That is to say, testing process, issuance process and entire (application development) process overlap each other. "
"In fact, Microsoft's tools are quite excellent, but our extensive experience is not necessarily to expand to people actually encounter," Booch said, "Visual Studio .NET will make up between differences, However, only Microsoft's integrated development environment and Rational tools are combined, developers can obtain enterprise capabilities for success. "A complete development cycle management tool needs to meet all of these requirements. Booch emphasizes some tools he thinks of the most important Rational.
"Rational ClearCase is an extension of a very good configuration management tool. When you handle large applications, especially when constructing applications on .NET, Rational ClearCase is an ideal platform for processing multiple releases, continuous changes, while continuing Change is the game name in this field "Booch said.
Conduct global review - local also work
In addition to configuration management, he also believes that it is necessary to provide a single developer to make them understand how to coordinate with the plan. An important product is the UML Visualization Model Tool for the first time - Rational Rose. "If I consider a distribution application - I will tell me some partial things, but I will not get any of this specific code snippet and distributed applications. So I have to do A certain degree of extraction, which makes me help to UML. "
In fact, UML and Rational Rose have been combined to provide a focus on the entire system design, especially when large applications contain components running on all devices in the network, are particularly important.
"Single person is easy to only care about local optimization, but in distributed environments, the local decision must have an impact on the global development. The best practice is to first have a structural processing process, that is, the topology used for construction, The survival environment, as well as the basic mechanisms of each part, and establish a special architecture, and deliver it to applications developers that can make a wise partial decision. "
In this way, UML naturally becomes the main driving force in .NET application development because it supports many different views of the same system.
"When considering more complex issues, I will let more shareholders engage in the system's own development. Each of them is different from other people, and there is a general language to communicate with each other. General language is UML, of course, Rational Rose is a tool that helps team works using UML. "Booch said. End of low quality
Of course, UML and Rational Rose, tools for visual models, but only part of the entire development cycle, which has reflected this view in other product lines of Rational. For example, Rational RequisitePro provides a method of defining, adjusting, and tracking application requirements. In the past, a group of very smart people gathered together, rushing up the Excel data sheet to track the needs of the application, this practice has been punished, but distributed applications, including .NET, development huge complexity makes The method of poor quality is no longer effective.
"In fact, in the absence of human resources and economic resources, it is increasingly important for construction, and its priority and intelligence exchange, so the tools such as Rational RequisitePro make you have a way to be established. And the project obtained is a sensible business decision. "Booch increased.
The holy cup in front of the developer?
However, Rational's contribution to .NET and Web services exceeded the product-oriented category. The company has a lot of partners, including Microsoft and IBM, have been engaged in the design of "Reusable Asset Rules" (ie RAS). Its purpose is to make the object-oriented programming and component reuse after the 20-year developer and supplier.
"The reason is that there are many reusable parts in the application. Theras tell you how to describe them via UML, so it is just the basic rules for different structural parts in complex systems." Booch said. Once completed, the company will give the RAS to the object management team - is also a standardized organization for checking the UML. "We examine the general mechanisms built on platforms such as .NET, and make them specifications, deliver to customers so they can accelerate their real system."
The center of these activities is of course UML. Moreover, as it is increasingly important in the scenario, is it possible to become a language supported by the .NET framework CLR (General Language Runtime)?
Although Booch refused to comment on the details of the product plan, he did not stop the introduction of its plan. "Now we can generate code from the status device from the status equipment through the Rational Rose. Is there anything like this in a non-real-time situation? We can see the customer adopt a sequence chart and other similar things - they Indicates the thread of the system behavior and rely on them to generate code. "
Although not described in detail on future products, it is certain that with Microsoft delivers .NET, Rational intended to provide a tool for design, build, test, and extend distributed web-based applications.
Stuart J. Johnston Seattle A successful technical news reporter, he wrote a lot of articles about Microsoft products. Recently, he has worked with some e-books about Microsoft .NET. He worked for Infoworld, Computerworld, Information Week, PC World, and XML Magazine, wrote an article for DEVX. He contributed to PC World's "Disadvantages and Correction" columns, for the four-year manuscript for the "Diamond Watch" column of Information Week.
