***Disclaimer: This information applies to Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 only.***
One of the new main features of the new version of the DSL toolkit is the “ModelBus”. The model bus basically allows a model element to reference another model element (ModelBusReference). These two model elements could be defined either in the same DSL or in different ones. With a ModelBusReference we can do interesting model interactions such as navigating the references back and forth, performing validation across models, etc.
The ModelBus infrastructure lives in two core assemblies:
- Microsoft.VisualStudio.Modeling.Sdk.Integration.10.0
- Microsoft.VisualStudio.Modeling.Sdk.Integration.Shell.10.0
Microsoft.VisualStudio.Modeling.Sdk.Integration.10.0
As the name implies, this assembly contains concepts that are totally decoupled from Visual Studio.
The main generic concepts are:
ModeBusAdapter
Is a bridge between the model bus and the underlying model. Therefore each model has its own adapter.
It’s main responsibilities are:
- Get all references of an element type
- Resolve a reference into an object
- Get the view associated with the model
ModelBusAdapterManager
Is used to create and control the lifetime of adapters.
It’s main responsibilities are:
- Create adapters
- Create reference to a model
- Return the list of supported adapters
- Return the list of exposed element types. An exposed element type is an element that can be referenced by another element
ModelBusReference
Encapsulates information about a reference in the model bus. It is composed of:
- Adapter reference
- Adapter id
- Model display name
- Element display name
It is being serialized as:
ModelBusAdapterReference
Represents the base class for adapter references
ModelBusView
Allows a client to manipulate the design surface of the model (if applicable)
It’s main responsibilities are:
- Open view
- Close view
- Show view
- Hide view
- Select UI elements
Then we have a set of derived classes that are specific to DSLs:
- ModeBusAdapter<- ModelingAdapter
- ModelBusAdapterReference <- ModelingAdapterReference
ModelingAdapter
Represents the base class for DSL based adapters. In this case the model is a DSL model.
ModelingAdapterReference
Encapsulates information about a model element reference, it is composed of:
- Model element id
- View id
- Model file absolute path
It is being serialized as:
Microsoft.VisualStudio.Modeling.Sdk.Integration.Shell.10.0
In this assembly there are concepts that are coupled to the Visual Studio infrastructure.
VsModelingAdapterManager
This adapter manager introduces the notion of document handlers that knows how to handle a DocData concept.
VsModelingView
This implementation is tied to the DocView concept.
Stay tuned,
Pablo
