One of the most interesting things that MS is building these days is the set of tools around their software factories initiative.

Software Factories, is actually a methodology that builds on the concepts of Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) along with frameworks, patterns and guidance.

The idea is to bring the notion of domain modeling and DSLs from horizontal markets (e.g. the form designer in any modern IDE) to the everyday use of vertical markets (i.e. your next application) and help realize the promise of product lines. Many of the ideas in software factories are not new (see for example this article from 1993) - however, today,as the Jack Greenfield et al  state in their book, a number of needed technologies has (finally) matured enough to make it feasible. Furthermore  What's unique in this effort is that Microsoft is making the effort to back the ideas with tools  that will enable architects and developers to put them into use.

A software factory needs 3 elements a schema, a template and tool to support them (a development environment). The schema is basically the recipe containing the overall information on how things should work together. The template is the set of DSLs, samples, frameworks that are used to create the factory and lastly we need  the IDE that supports them (e.g. Visual Studio "Whidbey" - although, at least technically this can also be achieved in Eclipse etc.)

I am, personally, very interested in this initiative. We already use code generation all over the place (DAL, serializations, Data Entities etc) and employ a domain driven approach even today. I would love to have "user-friendly" tools that will let me as an architect achieve these goals more easily.

One final note - yes I am aware of MDA (Model Driven Architecture) but all the MDA tools I've encountered thus far are lacking in their usability. This, by the way, brings me to one caveat with software factories - it is not based on UML 2.0. I would rather have a DSL that is based on stereotypes, tagged values and OCL. This would allow for a specific view using the appropriate designer but also for backward compatibility (and a downgraded view) on other tools. I do agree though, that UML 2.0 has its own share of problems - but that's a matter for another discussion altogether