What are software factories, and how do they relate to Microsoft s modeling strategy?
A software factory is a packaged set of guidance to build a specific type of deliverable. Think of it as a starter kit. What I am building has been built before, so give me the tools for the problem I am trying to solve and configure Visual Studio accordingly. Software factories are tuned to the big picture and tend to contain many DSLs. For example, you might have a software factory for building an e-commerce application. It includes information on the subsystems of an e-commerce site. It tells you what the architecture should look like. Then you make some tweaks and do some tuning. The new book, Software Factories Applied, which I am co-writing with Mauro Regio, will be published later this year.
