Visio 2000 Developer’s Survival Guide By Graham Wideman

Geoff Harrod

The title of this book is very apt. Visio is a program that can be extremely easy to use interactively and appears to be a rather simple system. But it has a lot of power and versatility lurking behind its simple façade, and when you start exploring the use of its deeper capabilities, it quickly becomes a rather complicated system to use. Similarly the programming or customizing aspect of Visio looks deceptively simple in principle, but is in fact quite an involved and confusing combination of interacting elements. 

The first battle is to comprehend its complex structure, hence the name of this book – ‘Developer’s Survival Guide’. It provides a very good overall guide to the way all the possible development modules and tools can be brought together, clarifies the distinct roles of each element and defines how they can interact. I think its greatest value is in helping you not to lose sight of the overall scheme you are trying to create. At the same time, however, it deals with the details of the parts and provides a very convenient detailed reference to many elements as well.

The back cover outlines its scope rather well:
The point of departure is an overview of the Visio environment, and the structures that Visio-based solutions might take. Next, the entire Visio structure is laid out in organized and comprehensive diagrams and tables, so you can absorb it at full speed. Each major area of Visio structure then comes under investigation to discover how its behavior can be tamed and harnessed by developers.

The chapter headings provide an outline of the form and scope of the book:

1. Introduction
2. Overview of Visio Territory – user’s view, developer’s view, ‘model + view + controller’s structure, Visio model vs Solution model
3. A plan for Coping – toolkit, VBA, skillset
4. Visio Object Mode
5. ShapeSheet Structure Introduction
6. ShapeSheet: Detailed Section-Row-Cell Structure
7. ShapeSheet functions
8. Visio Object and their Properties and Methods
9. Visio Files: Drawings, Stencils, Templates
10. Shapes – details of features, attributes
11. Masters and Shapes – Master vs Shape Instance
12. Some ShapeSheet Practicalities – row and cell names, calculation dependencies
13. Composite Shapes Using Groups – Group structure and behavior
14. Connectors, Routing and Layout
15. Glue and Connects
16. Formatting via Masters and Styles – Master-Instance relationships, inheritance
17. Line and Fill Patterns and Line Ends
18. Layers
19. The "User Interface" Functionality
20. Events – triggers and event handling
21. Loose Ends

The early parts of the book focus on an overall view of the Visio system and the overall view of the solution you want to build, and how they mesh. That is, in practical terms, how to work out a structure for your project that is coherent and workable, and can be fitted together with the structure that Visio uses. This is, in classical programming practice, the ‘systems analysis’ and ‘system development’ stages. You analyze the business system to be supported by the software project and then develop a software system structure that can perform the required actions and fit in with the actual business system. Here, as in many software systems today, there is a third level of relationship: business system – solution structure – foundation software structure. The foundation in this case is of course, Visio.

The book has many diagrams. Some explain the structures and relationships of elements; others explain particular actions. But the largest feature of the book is tables. These tabulate the details of elements, and provide a very valuable reference resource that a developer will continually come back to in the course of working.

The two diagrams reproduced here give an indication of the factors involved in building solutions based on Visio. The first models the possible components of a Visio-based solution and their inter-relationships. Most solutions will not involve all the possible elements. The second diagram is a simplified representation of the Object Model of Visio itself. After this concept has been explained in chapter 2, a more complex version of this diagram is presented that fills in the parts that were left out to simplify comprehension of the overall scheme.

I once tried to delve into Visio and learn its programming unaided, considering myself a well trained programmer, with a Computer Science degree, who has been involved with many languages and CAD systems. I soon became lost, and gave up, since there was no compelling reason for me to succeed at the time. This book would have helped enormously, and probably led to my getting more involved with Visio. I would certainly suggest that anyone who is considering doing any development work with Visio should get Graham Wideman’s book. It will be good value and avoid much frustration.

Graham Wideman has been building solutions with Visio for over five years, and has over 20 years of experience in electrical engineering, software development, information systems and business analysis. He clearly knows Visio inside-out and, perhaps even more importantly, understands the importance of system structure and the relation to the business structure that the software is to support. This book is, I think, a ‘must-have’ if you delve into Visio programming. There is a companion website for further support and updates.

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