Yesterday Microsoft released a preview version of a piece of software that they hope will revolutionize and revitalize the process of building large software applications. The software, code-named "Whitehorse," will ship as a component of Visual Studio 2005 and has Microsoft pinning the future of enterprise development on its success.
At its core, Whitehorse is a modeling tool which includes an application designer, a logical data center designer, and a system hosting designer. It lets developers create a blueprint for projects before they are implemented in hopes that last-minute bugs and organizational issues can be resolved well ahead of the point where fixing them becomes prohibitively expensive.
So why should a company go with Microsoft's offering? IBM, Borland, Compuware and Computer Associates International already provide similar software packages and are making big pushes of their own. By integrating a cutting-edge modeling tool within their development suite, Microsoft is hoping that they'll have a leg up on their competitors. According to Microsoft lead product manager, Prashant Sridharan,
"Traditionally, modeling tools have been very generic and have had little relation to the underlying code...It's pretty pictures that don't tell the actual developers much."
Microsoft's decision to shun the more commonly-used Unified Modeling Language in favor of a proprietary solution is a curious one. The software giant is apparently betting that by developing their own approach, developers will be able to take full advantage of Whitehorse using the new tools. This lets developers from different industries create their own modeling language designed for their unique specifications, constraints, and strengths.
The ever-increasing complexity of software, even within Microsoft, has been the focus of much scrutiny lately. Often times, the problems that arise after a software suite has been deployed could have been caught during the design and planning stages. Microsoft made developers more productive with the development of .NET and scored big-time. Will Microsoft see the same kind of success with Whitehorse?
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