Professional Visual Studio® 2008

51.1. Introduction to the Automation Model

The automation model is a set of smaller models included in the Visual Studio architecture to provide access to different pieces of the Visual Studio functionality via code. It lets you automate all the tasks that you can accomplish in the IDE via .NET code and consists of some smaller models, including:

• Environment model: This model is at the core of the automation model and collaborates with all other models in order to provide some common functionality for developers to use.

• Project model: This model is responsible for providing some features to work with solutions, projects, and project items in the automation model.

• Editor model: This model is responsible for documents in editors in general. It provides some tools to manipulate the text in the editor for different documents.

• Code model: This model is responsible for manipulating different pieces and types of code.

• Forms model: This model lets you manipulate Windows Forms elements, user controls, and some other user interface elements via your code.

• Debugger model: This model lets you get access to some information and methods of the Visual Studio debugger in order to work with debugging features on the fly.

• Build model: The last model is the build model, which lets you manipulate the build process automatically and from within your code.

Figure 51-1 shows a schematic view of these models and their associations in the automation model. As you can see, the common environment model is in ...