In my reading of Refactoring in Large Software Projects: Performing Complex Restructurings Successfully - I have been thinking about how to look at some of the dependencies we are dealing with in one of our frameworks. The framework has been widely used – and successful. It is however very monolithic in its solution structure. I will say – much of it has been well done by smart folks. That said, we still need to start to get to a model where we have a “core” and some ala carte add-ons, as opposed to a monolithic model so we can deal with some elements with different levels of volatility. In any case – that book, talks a lot about subsystem and package dependencies. Robert Martin’s writings (as well as some other folks from ObjectMentor) talk quite a bit about dependency management between parts of applications. 

 I have often said to people learning about IoC/ DIP that much of higher level software conversation winds up being about dependency management. IoC/ DIP is sort of that in a microcosm, whereas how packages and subsystems depend on each other and relate to each other is in the middle somewhere – and at the enterprise level – you have the dependencies between applications and their data flows. Dependencies, dependencies, dependencies. 

Enter NDepend in .net land. I have followed the tool for a bit, and I think it is overdue for me to give it a real go! NDepend – check out this presentation. I must say – I am impressed. It seems to be a tool that will give some actionable insight into how your apps parts are hanging together. 

-Chris

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