In the last post I've talked briefly about some concepts of the xLim 2 approach. I'm going to continue with the software requirement for the efficient development of the solutions supporting this architecture.

NB: any person considering himself to be a good .NET software developer should at least know about the existence and functionality of these software pieces (or any suitable analogues).

IDE, required tools and libraries

• .NET 2.0 + SP1
• Visual Studio 2005 + SP1
• Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (or 2005) is the preferred database engine (or any other engine supported by the eXpress Persistent Objects framework)
• ReSharper 3.x
• TestDriven.NET
• NUnit 2.0
• TortoiseSVN
• Reflector for .NET
• NAnt+NAntContrib
• Castle MicroKernel/Windsor Container
• NMock2
• DXperience (Enterprise)
• log4net

Recommended tools

• Red Gate Compare & Data Compare (efficient work with the SQL databases)
• XMLSpy
• Good XSD code generator (we simply use tweaked XSD Class Gen)
• FSCapture (to work with screen-shots)
• FileZilla (to access secure FTP-servers)
• Fiddler2 (free web debugging proxy)
• Console (one of the tabbed command prompts)
• SnippetCompiler (to compile and run .NET snippets without VS)
• PSTools (command-line tools that could save a day)
• Process Monitor (windows tool to watch real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity)
• Process Explorer (free windows tool to inspect processes, threads, DLLs, open handles etc)
• ieDevToolbar plus Firefox DOM inspector
• JetBrains dotTrace Profiler
• FxCop (to check .NET assemblies for the conformance to some .NET Microsoft guidelines)

References

• Smart Client Software Factory Guidance
• Composite UI Application Block
• Enterprise Library Application Blocks 3.1
• Web Service Software Factory
• StructureMap

Development Environment Requirements

• Secure Subversion repository
• CruiseControl.NET integration server
• Subversion binaries
• .NET 2.0 SDK + SP1
• CCNetConfig (GUI for CC.NET configuration)
• DXperience
• NCover+NCoverExplorer (unit test code coverage and the extra tools for it)
• NUnit
• IIS with the web dashboard (optional)
• SMTP server
• Secure FTP server (something like free zFTPServer)
• Trac (wiki + issue management + roadmap)

Tools for the Project Manager

• Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint)
• MS Project (the project management and coordination)
• MS Visio (all the diagrams)
• Mindjet MindManager (workflow diagrams and brain-storming)
• NDepend (to run code analysis at the project milestones)
• SourceMonitor

Note: these are just the requirements for this specific xLim 2 approach the I've got used to work with. They simply derive from the specific architecture, software development principles, guidelines and standards. And they are changing rather quickly.

The next big post on xLim 2 will be about less tangible things: recommended reading, software development standards, guidelines and principles. Efficient software development is impossible without having those (and being consistent with that).