Code Generation in Microsoft .NET (Paperback)

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Code generation has the potential to revolutionize application development. Rather than handcrafting each piece of code, developers are increasingly turning to code generation based on templates and applications of business logic to automatically perform a variety of tasks. This book teaches the technical details of code generation in .NET through a coherent series of steps that will help you to incorporate code generation into your own development efforts.

Veteran author Kathleen Dollard teaches code generation as a scripted repeatable process using templates you control, so youre not tied to a particular framework or style. Because you can regenerate code at any time, you can incorporate changes, including database changes, throughout the life of your application. The templates are flexible and designed to work smoothly with the handcrafted code youll use to customize your application. The underlying fundamentals are explained along with three specific techniques: outputting code to a stream, using the Code DOM, and using XSLT-based code generation.

In addition to the text, the tools in the book (downloadable in both VB .NET and C#) include a mechanism to extract information from SQL Server; a tool for editing and running code-generation scripts; a simple, flexible ORM tool that relates your database structure to your runtime class model; and a set of templates you can use as the starting point for your adventures in code generation.

Generating repetitive sections of code frees you to focus on the features that make your application unique. Code generation will turbo-charge your development cycles by offering speed, reusability, agility, and consistency. Go forth and generate!

Code generation has the potential to revolutionize application development. Rather than handcrafting each piece of code, enterprises will increasingly turn to code generation based on templates and application of business logic to automatically generate code to perform a variety of tasks.

Code Generation in Microsoft .NET presents the fundamentals of code generation. Code generation is already used extensively in Visual Studio .NET – every form-based application contains potentially hundreds of lines of “wizard” created code, which is modified as the developer sets various properties. Strongly typed datasets, XML schemas and web service proxies are also generated automatically by Visual Studio. This results in a huge cost savings and improvement in software reliability.

Developers need both the technical details of how to accomplish code generation in .NET as well as a coherent series of steps to follow to incorporate code generation into their development. Code Generation in Microsoft .NET teaches developers how to adopt these techniques in their own development efforts. To accomplish this, this book introduces a series of five steps that leverage code generation both within and between projects in the organization. The mechanics of code generation introduced in the book are organized around these steps, and provide the tools to leverage code generation for significant payback on the very first application where it is used.