Microsoft Sharpens Its Software Factory Vision

In a speech at the Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications—or OOPSLA—conference here, Microsoft Corp.'s head researcher announced a new framework and tools for building domain-specific languages and the precursor to the company's software factories strategy.

Rick Rashid, senior vice president of Microsoft Research, described the strategy during his keynote at the conference, saying software factories represent "a change in what we actually want to do with software. Now we have to think about programming with large components."

As software factories co-author and Microsoft software architect Jack Greenfield initially told eWEEK over the summer, software factories use tools such as Microsoft's Visual Studio Team System, DSLs, patterns frameworks and guidance to build applications for specific industries or markets. However, the software factory approach is still somewhat futuristic and fits well with Rashid's talk on the future of programming.

"This is the first down payment on our promise of software factories," Rashid said.

Thus, Microsoft is starting now in delivering on its vision. "Our Visual Studio team is delivering a set of tools for developing software factories," Rashid said. "It's a domain-specific tools package."

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