Architecture Design Tools for MS BI

I got married last month, just returned from my honeymoon and catching up with the workload and routine life. Visual Studio 2012 got RTM and can be downloaded from here. Some of the new enhancements introduced in VS 2012 caught my attention and I find it really impressive.

One of the famous tools for architecture design modeling has been Enterprise Architect. Generally the gap between an architect and design (physical and/or logical) and development team is created by the tooling platform they use for their own set of works. Out-of-box you don't find an integrated platform that bridges deliverables of an

• Architect i.e. Layered Architecture Diagram(s)
• Design Team i.e. Class / Entity / Workflow Diagram(s)
• Development Team i.e. Code modules

Lineage tracking across these artifacts using an integarted tool can keep the solution totally in place. VS 2012 diagramming features provides exactly the same. Check out the following videos to get a quick overview of those features.

1) Visual Studio Premium and Ultimate 2012: Improving architecture through modeling

2) Visual Studio Ultimate 2012: Using layer diagrams to design and validate your architecture

3) Visual Studio Premium and Ultimate 2012: Understand your code dependencies through visualization

Only thing that feels disappointing is the extent to which these can be applied in the database / MS BI world. Once you move out of the application world and enter the world of data, I wish same could be applied to data warehouse architecture designs. As of now these features can be used to a limited scope for DW architecture blueprints.

It depends upon the eye and mind that knows how to use a piece of paper as a disposable glass !!