Tools

Development for applications based on the Microsoft Business Framework, such as the Business Portal, is performed using industry-standard tools. These tools allow you to leverage skills you may already have, and build skills that you can use for other projects. The Business Portal SDK includes other tools that perform specific tasks during the development process.

Visual Studio .NET

All code is written and compiled using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. Microsoft Business Solutions is using the C# language for all of its .NET development. It is an excellent language for business application development, and we encourage you to use it for applications you develop. Note that other languages, such as Visual Basic .NET can be used as well.

Rational XDE

All application modeling and design for the Business Portal is performed with Rational XDE. XDE is integrated into the Visual Studio .NET environment. A modeling tool like XDE allows you to design an application and resolve design issues long before you write code.

A special profile for Rational XDE is used when modeling applications for the business framework. This special profile allows you to easily model characteristics that are unique to applications created with the framework.

Code Generator

The business framework provides a code generator add-in for XDE that can generate C# code from the class diagrams you create. This greatly speeds the development process, and is an essential step in developing your application.

Entity Relational Map Generator

The Entity Relational Map Generator is used to create special “map” files that describe how data in a business entity is to be stored and retrieved from the SQL database. The map files created by this tool also help to define the relationships between entities.

Entity Association Map Generator

The Entity Association Map Generator produces special “association” files that describe how various entities are related to each other. This tool extracts the relationship information from the class diagrams you created in XDE and transforms it into a form that can be used to enhance your application through features such as hypermedia navigation.