Working with Visual Basic 2005

PowerDesigner provides full support for modeling all aspects of Visual Basic 2005 including round-trip engineering.

Visual Basic 2005 is a high-level programming language for the Microsoft .NET framework.

PowerDesigner can be used as a standalone product and as a plug-in for the Visual Studio 2005 development environment, allowing you to integrate its enterprise-level modeling capabilities in your standard .NET workflow. For more information, see Chapter 15, Working with the PowerDesigner Plugin for Visual Studio in the Core Features Guide.

This chapter outlines the specifics of PowerDesigner’s support for modeling the Visual Basic 2005 language, and should be read in conjunction with the language-neutral chapters in Part One of this book.

In addition to PowerDesigner's standard palettes, the following custom tools are available to help you rapidly develop your class and composite structure diagrams:

• Visual Basic 2005 Assemblies
  An assembly is a collection of Visual Basic 2005 files that forms a DLL or executable. PowerDesigner provides support for both single-assembly models (where the model represents the assembly) and multi-assembly models (where each assembly appears directly below the model in the Browser tree and is modeled as a standard UML package with a stereotype of <<Assembly>>).
• Visual Basic 2005 Compilation Units
  By default, PowerDesigner generates one source file for each class, interface, delegate, or other type, and bases the source directory structure on the namespaces defined in the model.
• Visual Basic 2005 Namespaces
  Namespaces restrict the scope of an object's name. Each class or other type must have a unique name within the namespace.
• Visual Basic 2005 Classes
  PowerDesigner models Visual Basic 2005 classes as standard UML classes, but with additional properties.
• Visual Basic 2005 Interfaces
  PowerDesigner models Visual Basic 2005 interfaces as standard UML interfaces, with additional properties.
• Visual Basic 2005 Structs
  Structs are lightweight types that make fewer demands on the operating system and on memory than conventional classes. PowerDesigner models Visual Basic 2005 structs as classes with a stereotype of <<Structure>>.
• Visual Basic 2005 Delegates
  Delegates are type-safe reference types that provide similar functions to pointers in other languages. PowerDesigner models delegates as classes with a stereotype of <<Delegate>> with a single operation code-named "<signature>". The visibility, name, comment, flags and attributes are specified on the class object whereas the return-type and parameters are specified on the operation.
• Visual Basic 2005 Enums
  Enums are sets of named constants. PowerDesigner models enums as classes with a stereotype of <<Enum>>.
• Visual Basic 2005 Fields, Events, and Properties
  PowerDesigner models Visual Basic 2005 fields, events, and properties as standard UML attributes with additional properties.
• Visual Basic 2005 Methods
  PowerDesigner models Visual Basic 2005 methods as operations.
• Visual Basic 2005 Inheritance and Implementation
  PowerDesigner models Visual Basic 2005 inheritance links as standard UML generalizations or realizations.
• Visual Basic 2005 Custom Attributes
  PowerDesigner provides full support for Visual Basic 2005 custom attributes, which allow you to add metadata to your code. This metadata can be accessed by post-processing tools or at run-time to vary the behavior of the system.
• Generating Visual Basic 2005 Files
  You generate Visual Basic 2005 source files from the classes and interfaces of a model. A separate file, with the file extension .vb, is generated for each class or interface that you select from the model, along with a generation log file.
• Reverse Engineering Visual Basic 2005 Code
  You can reverse engineer Visual Basic 2005 files into an OOM.