Sneak peek at the first “Feature Pack” for VS2010 Visualization and Modeling Tools

What’s in this “Feature Pack”?

There are three major areas that this “Feature Pack” is designed to address:

1. Increased Visualization Support
   1. Visualize your native ( C++ ) code
   2. Visualize your WAP or Web Sites or ASP.NET MVC code
2. Increased UML support
   1. Code Generation from UML Class diagram
   2. Rapid population of Modeling Store from Architecture Explorer
   3. XMI 2.1 Import
3. Increased support for Layer Diagram Extensibility

Increased Visualization Support

In the RTM release of VS2010, we have great visualization support for managed assemblies. We don’t have any support for native developers, nor did we have first class support for Web projects or Web Sites developed inside Visual Studio.

With this “Feature Pack”, you now have some great functionality for both native and web projects in Visual Studio 2010.

Native Code Visualization

All of the visualization features in the RTM version of VS2010 support managed code ( runtime versions 1.1 on up ). This “Feature Pack” will now allow you to visualize your C++ projects, as well as supporting C++ images ( .dll or exe ), with extra support if you also have the PDBs with those images. The support is in three forms:

1. Architecture Explorer – allows you to explorer your solution just like you would with managed code via the cascading browser
   
2. #include dependencies – pick a header file, and visualize the include dependencies associated with that header file. This is great stuff when you are trying to determine just how bad touching a particular header file will mean to your already taxed build times!
3. Inter-binary dependencies – drag a native DLL or EXE onto the DGML document surface, and we’ll crack those images and tell you how they are related.
4. Standard Graph Support – if you select the Generate Dependency->By Assembly menu with a C++ project loaded, you’ll get a very similar look graph that you are used to on the managed side. Here’s a shot of a simple MFC application showing dependencies on the ATL CString type:
   

Web Application and Web Site Project Visualizations

If you are using Web Site, Web Application Projects, or taking advantage of the latest ASP.NET MVC framework, we’ve got some great stuff coming for you as well!

We will show you not only how your pages are dependent on each other, but how they are also dependent on controls, and how they are related to the code-behind logic behind them, if applicable. And of course, the ability to drive right into your pages, master templates, and code directly from the graph will be supported.