Guidance Automation
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The Web Service Software Factory is now maintained by the community and can be found on the Service Factory site. This content is outdated and is no longer being maintained. It is provided as a courtesy for individuals who are still using these technologies. Retired: November 2011 |
A guidance package is a named collection of recipes and templates. Developers can use a guidance package to perform a series of development activities in Visual Studio 2008; guidance packages perform development activities that developers usually have to manually perform.
Architects use the Guidance Automation Toolkit to create a guidance package. After it is created, the architect distributes a Microsoft Windows Installer package that contains the guidance package. Developers install the guidance package on development computers that have the required run-time component Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX). After a guidance package is installed and enabled for a particular solution, the developer executes recipes to perform the required tasks. These tasks affect the structure and source code of the active solution. For example, a particular task may add a project to the solution and create three classes in that project. The developer adds customizations and additional business logic to the solution. During development, the developer can use the guidance package to perform other tasks. The developer builds the application and distributes it to the end users.
A guidance package extends Visual Studio and offers guidance to developers as they develop applications. Developers activate the guidance through gestures in Visual Studio. For example, a developer can right-click a class in Solution Explorer, and then click a guidance package menu item. When the developer clicks the menu item, the guidance package executes of a series of tasks. The results of the task can be simple, such as the addition of method to the class, or complex, such as the creation of a new project with classes that are added to the solution.
The Service Factory Modeling Edition guidance package is automatically enabled when a solution is created using the Service Factory. For more information about the specific tasks that you can do using the Web Service Software Factory guidance package, see the Building a Web Service Hands-on Lab.
Guidance Automation Toolkit
The Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) is an extension to Visual Studio 2008. By using it, architects can author rich, integrated user experiences for reusable assets including frameworks, components, and patterns. Architects and developers use the Guidance Automation Toolkit to create guidance packages. A guidance package contains templates, wizards, and recipes that automate development activities that developers would usually have to manually perform. By using the toolkit, architects can ensure that repetitive and often error-prone activities are performed in a consistent manner; this streamlines and accelerates the development process. It also ensures that the resulting solutions are created in a way consistent with the architecture guidance. For more information about GAT, see Guidance Automation Extensions and Guidance Automation Toolkit.
To download GAT, see Guidance Automation Toolkit and Guidance Automation Extensions Download.
For more information about how you can use GAT to modify the Web Service Software Factory, see the Hands-on Lab: Creating Your Version of the Service Factory.