Title : Microsoft Visio 2010 – Business Process Diagramming and Validation

Author : David J. Parker

Summary :
Microsoft Visio 2010, Business Process Diagramming and Validation, written by the Visio MVP David Parker focuses on Visio 2010 and its use for validating diagrams. Moreover, the edition that is the subject of the book is the Premium one. The reason for that is because only the Premium Edition has the diagram validation feature.
It starts by a description of the new features of Visio 2010. It continues with the description of the Microsoft Visio Object Model and the Connectivity API used to run through the diagram, its shapes and their connections. After this, the necessary ShapeSheet is explained, before going through the validation API.
After all that theory, some practice with the development of a Visio Add-In in WPF to explore the ShapeSheets and the validation rules. This Add-in is then used in all the next chapters to create validation rules.
A complete chapter is dedicated to the publishing and packaging of Visio templates, including validation rules.

Book Review :
The book leads the reader from the beginning, exploring the Visio Object model to a completely packaged Visio template containing validation rules, which is very interesting and easy to follow. The explanations and examples are clear and illustrated with comprehensive piece of code. Especially, the packaging part that I found particularly well explained.
On the other side, some part of the book have big pieces of code, which is good because you don’t have to be online to get the source code on a web site (even if the complete solution described in the book is available on a dedicated site). But, this makes sometimes these part more difficult to follow and a bit heavy.
Finally, a good book for developers and power users that want to start implementing diagram validation.

For the people that want a free sample chapter of the book (Understanding the Microsoft Visio Object Model), they can follow this link.