I’m not sounding off in the pub, so I guess I’ll blog the workshop that Alan and Steven Kelly from MetaCase are doing at XP2005. It’s called “Agile Development with Domain Specific Languages” and here’s the abstract:

This workshop will investigate the application of Domain Specific Languages within Agile development. A Domain Specific Language (DSL) is designed to express the requirements and solutions of a particular business or architectural domain. SQL, GUI designers, workflow languages and regular expressions are familiar examples. In recent years, Domain-Specific Modeling has yielded spectacular productivity improvements in domains such as telephony and embedded systems. By creating graphical or textual languages specific to the needs of an individual project or product line within one company, DSM offers maximum agility. With current tools, creating a language and related tool support is fast enough to make DSM a realistic possibility for projects of all sizes.

I’m still digging out my inbox after my two week vacation. I’m down to 134 items from nearly 400 this morning. I was at 16 before I left. If it gets this bad in two weeks, what’s going to happen when I take my four week paternity leave?

While I’m getting up to date on email, I am way way way behind on blog reading. But I did see that Gareth is promoting a web chat about the DSL toolkit tomorrow at 9am Pacific time. Here’s the abstract:

Using the Domain-Specific Languages Tools for Visual Studio 2005

Domain-specific language tools lay the foundation for software factories by providing a framework and a set of tools for delivering domain-specific visual designers that plug into Visual Studio Team System. These designers could be tools for industry verticals, such as the health care or telecommunications industries or, they could be tools for development across numerous disciplines, such as object-oriented modeling and architecture. The Microsoft Tools for Domain-Specific Languages is part of the Visual Studio 2005 SDK.

Now if we could just get a copy of the DSL toolkit that runs on Beta 2!

Taking a momentary break from new dad duties to point out that the Guidance Automation Toolkit workbench is now live. In addition to the bits (both the toolkit and the extensions are available seperately) there’s also an introductory article. Plus there’s the on-demand webcast we did, now with a shorter URL.

I try to spend more time writing original content for this site and less time simply pointing at other people’s stuff. However, you’ll notice the lack of updates around here lately. Things are busy at home – my wife and I are expecting our second child this week! So the dearth of content will continue for now…

However, while I remain too busy to blog, here are a couple of other new blogs worth reading:

• David Ing’s blog From 9 till 2 is a must read. He asked for no gratuitous linking, but it’s too good to keep secret. Not only does David have valuable insights, he’s also funny. Check out his thoughts on SOA Versioning, Domain Specific Languages, Smart Clients and Wikis. But whatever you do, don’t miss his post on the Cold War of OO->SOA, building on Ted’s Vietnam War analogy of object/relational mapping.
• Wojtek Kozaczynski is an architect for patterns & practices and is heavily involved with the Guidance Automation Toolkit I blogged about two weeks ago. He writes in his introductory post that he’s started blogging now to talk about the GAT, starting with a brief history of how it came to be.

FYI, I’m presenting at the monthly meeting of the International Association of Software Architects Puget Sound chapter Wed night (4/27). I’ll be talking about DSLs and Software Factories, including a hands-on look at the tool. If you’re in the Redmond area, the meeting is on the Microsoft campus in Building 43, Room 1560 – the Jefferson Room.