VSTS 2010 Architecture
Edition
Raj Selvaraj
rselvara@microsoft.com

Introduction
How many times have you walked into a legacy
codebase and had no idea what was there?
All systems have an architecture, whether you plan it or not
Most systems today have evolved into Big Ball of Mud
architectures
Understanding and discovering what is there is a serious
challenge today
Ending with a system you want and can maintain is
more important than defining the right thing before
you start

VSTS 2010 Architecture Edition:

The Object Management Group (OMG)
Microsoft joined OMG

Unified Modeling Language (UML)
• The OMG Specification
States
• The Unified Modeling Language
is a visual language for
specifying, constructing, and
documenting the artifacts of
systems. It is a general-purpose
modeling language that can be
used with all major object and
component methods, and that
can be applied to all application
domains and implementation
platforms.

Modeling with UML diagrams
Category UML Diagrams UML Diagrams
supported in VSTS2010
Architecture Edition
Structure Class Diagram, Object Class diagram , Component
Diagram Diagram, Component Diagram
Diagram, Composite
Structure Diagram,
Package Diagram, and
Deployment Diagram.
Behavior Use Case Diagram , Use Case Diagram , and
Diagrams Activity Diagram, and Activity Diagram.
State Machine Diagram.
Interaction Sequence Diagram, Sequence Diagram
Diagrams Communication
Diagram, Timing
Diagram, and Interaction
Overview Diagram.

Architectural Discovery
• Everyone has existing code bases
• Key architectural elements are undocumented
• Maintenance is hard, changes are expensive
• What can we do?
• Let’s begin by discovering what we have using
Architecture Explorer…

Architecture Explorer
• Understanding a
system can prevent
the butterfly effect.
• Architecture Explorer
helps discover and
understand how a
system works.
• Visualize existing
code assets and how
they connect.

Layer Diagram
• Architectural validation
ensures code matches intended
design.
• Layer diagram details the
intended design.
• Classes and namespaces are
mapped to layers in the
diagram.

Sequence Diagram

Demos
• Architectural Discovery
• Exploring Your Existing Application
– Visualize call dependencies in the overall solution
– Visualize interaction sequences in existing code (Reverse
Engineering – Sequence Diagram)
• Validating Code Changes with the Layer
Design
• Associate the code with the corresponding layers
• Validate the code against the layer design

How Does This Relate To Agile?
• For agile teams, Architecture is a way
to organize and communicate about
work and not to define the work
• All agile teams use models. They just
don’t often do a lot of modeling up front
• Agile teams will create models on the fly
as needed to describe, design and define
a candidate design for a user story or task
• In today’s globally disbursed
environments, whiteboards won’t always
suffice. We need to share in a way that can
cross geographies and time zones

Conclusions
• Every system has an architecture, the trick is
figuring out what you have and what you
want to do
• Communicating effectively with your entire
team is paramount
• Architectural modeling and discovery
tooling is useful regardless of development
methodology