Professional UML with Visual Studio .NET—Unmasking Visio for Enterprise Architects

Andrew Filev

Tony Loton

Kevin McNeish

Ben Schoellmann

John Slater

Chaur G. Wu

Wrox Press Ltd. ®

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First Printed December ©2002

Reprinted March 2003

Published by Wrox Press Ltd.,

Arden House, 1102 Warwick Road, Acocks Green,

Birmingham, B27 6BH

United Kingdom

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 0764543768

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Credits

Authors

Andrew Filev

Tony Loton

Kevin McNeish

Ben Schoellmann

John Slater

Chaur G. Wu

Technical Reviewers

Kourosh Ardestani

Paul Churchill

Mitch Denny

Mark Horner

Andrew Krowczyk

Christian Nagel

Ben Schoellmann

David Schultz

Bill Sempf

Erick Sqarbi

Helmut Watson

Managing Editor

Louay Fatoohi

Commissioning Editors

Douglas Paterson

Gerard Maguire

Technical Editors

Gerard Maguire

Douglas Paterson

Project Manager

Charlotte Smith

Production Coordinator

Sarah Hall

Cover

Natalie O''''Donnell

Indexer

Andrew Criddle

Proofreader

Chris Smith

About the Authors

Andrew Filev

Andrew Filev is President of dotSITE Software. This company specializes in cost-effective development on the .NET platform. Andrew''''s team has been developing commercial solutions using .NET since the first public announcement of this new Microsoft strategy. Andrew set up one of the first .NET portals, and has held a number of seminars and lectures dedicated to .NET in state and private companies.

Andrew has implemented numerous solutions in various high-tech fields - Web Services, ERP applications, medical systems, development frameworks, among others. He can be reached at <andrew@dotsitesoftware.com> or www.dotsitesoftware.com.

Special thanks for my friend Igor for his help with the book, also for Doug, Charlotte, and Gerard for their great editorial work. Thanks for dotSITE team without whom I would never take a part in working on the architecture of such interesting projects.

Tony Loton

Tony Loton works through his company LOTONtech Limited (http://www.lotontech.com) as an independent consultant, course instructor, and technical writer. The current area of interest at LOTONtech is the enhancement of UML visual modeling tools - specifically Rational Rose and Visio for Enterprise Architects - to facilitate .NET application design. Further details can be found at http://www.lotontech.com/visualmodeling.

Tony graduated in 1991 with a BSc. Hons. degree in Computer Science and Management and he currently holds an appointment as associate lecturer with the Open University in the UK.

My contribution is dedicated to my wife and children, for respecting my need to "get on with it".

Kevin McNeish

Kevin is President of Oak Leaf Enterprises, a company that specializes in object-oriented developer tools, training, and software. He started his programming career twenty years ago working with Assembly Language, then moved to C, Visual FoxPro, and currently uses C# as his primary .NET development tool. He authored the book .NET for Visual FoxPro Developers and teaches both .NET and UML training classes in North America and Europe.

He has also written UML articles for CoDe, FoxPro Advisor, and FoxTalk magazines. Kevin, a Microsoft MVP, is the creator of a .NET business application framework called "The Mere Mortals Framework for .NET". He also mentors software companies in a variety of vertical markets to design and build component-based applications that scale from the desktop to the Internet. He can be reached at <oakleaf@oakleafsd.com> or www.oakleafsd.com.

As always, thanks to my wife Nicole and my sons Jordan, Timothy, and Alexander for their love and support while writing this book!

Ben Schoellmann

Benjamin Schoellmann credits his move to sunny Houston, Texas, with providing the inspiration necessary to pursue a development and writing career. Currently he is involved with evangelizing .NET technologies among his coworkers at Synhrgy HR Technologies. Among his favored activities are golfing, tinkering with his network, talking incessantly, and integrating hardware and software solutions, primarily home automation, to enhance his leisurely pursuit of Slack. He maintains several content-free WEB domains, including Benjammin.com. He is obsessive about keeping pace with emerging technologies, and is very quick to credit his developer friends with all his success in the IT field.

And while he''''s quick to blame the dog for just about everything, his friends know better.

I''''d like to thank all my friends and family for putting up with me during this process... and the rest of the time as well.

John Slater

John Slater is a project manager at Management Reports International in Cleveland, OH. At MRI he is currently developing applications for the property management industry. Right now, he is working on several projects using .NET development tools and .NET Enterprise servers.

In his free time John enjoys outdoor activities and playing with his children Rachel and Nathan. He can be reached at <jr_slater@hotmail.com>.

Chaur G. Wu

Chaur Wu currently works for Trend Micro Inc. as a senior software engineer. He started software programming before was old enough to qualify for a driving license. The first program he wrote was a bingo game - in assembly code on a 8051 single chip. To capitalize on the program, he ran a small casino in the lab - he developed primitive game boxes that connected his pals and allowed them to place bets.

He''''s also been involved in much larger projects. For example, he developed a program in C++ to simulate the movement and geographical coverage of GPS satellites. As a research assistant in his graduate study, he implemented a wavelet-based video compression algorithm for a traffic surveillance system sponsored by Boston City Department of Transportation. He also helped solve a blurred image problem using inverse filters and other image processing algorithms for a client who designs fiber optics components in San Jose, CA.

His technical interests include distributed software systems in Java, COM, and .NET, generative programming, software design, and neural networks. Outside of work, his favorite vacation combines a one-night gambling trip to Reno followed by a day of skiing at some resort near Lake Tahoe.

You can e-mail Chaur at <cha_urwu@hotmail.com>.

I would like to dedicate my efforts in this book to my two-year-old daughter, Sarah.- CGW