Microsoft Calls Developers to Vista

Microsoft Calls Developers to Vista
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At the DevConnections show, Microsoft puts out a call to developers to jump on the Vista bandwagon.LAS VEGAS—Just a year after releasing its primary tool set for building applications on Windows, Microsoft has announced a set of new technologies aimed at helping developers build next-generation interactive applications for Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office System and the Web.

In a keynote address at the Visual Studio & .Net Connections conference here (also known as DevConnections) Nov. 6, Scott Guthrie, general manager of the Developer Division at Microsoft, laid out the new products Microsoft is making available to developers to promote a better development experience on the forthcoming Windows Vista operating system. Windows Vista is expected to be released to manufacturing any day now.

At a launch event in San Francisco last November, Steve Ballmer, Microsofts chief executive, announced Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and Biztalk Server 2006 as the next-generation tools for connected systems. Now, a year later, Microsoft is launching a set of new tools for creating Web services and next-generation, connected service-oriented applications, Guthrie said.

Microsoft announced slew of new technologies for developers, including the release to manufacturing of the Microsoft .Net Framework 3.0, which provides advances for building rich, interactive client applications via WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), communication and workflow via WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) and WF (Windows Workflow Foundation), and online identity management via Windows CardSpace.

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Microsoft also announced the availability of Visual Studio 2005 extensions for the .Net Framework 3.0. This is a series of plug-ins and project templates that enable developers to use Visual Studio 2005 to build .Net Framework 3.0 solutions.

In addition, Microsoft announced the release to manufacturing of Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office for the 2007 Microsoft Office system to build solutions for the six major applications in the 2007 Microsoft Office system: Office Word, Office Excel, Office Outlook, Office PowerPoint, Office Visio and Office InfoPath. Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office for the 2007 Microsoft Office system enables developers to build scalable line-of-business applications that leverage the functionality of the 2007 Microsoft Office system, the company said.

Vista holds promise for developers. Click here to read more.

Also at the show, Microsoft announced the release of Beta 2 of its ASP.Net AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) Extensions and Microsoft AJAX Library (collectively called ASP.Net AJAX), formerly code-named Atlas. This is a free framework that allows developers to quickly create a new generation of more-efficient, more-interactive and highly personalized Web experiences that work across the most popular browsers, said Brian Goldfarb, group product manager of Microsofts Web Platform and Tools Team.

Adding to its SQL Server family, Microsoft announced the release candidate of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition, an offering for essential relational database functionality in a compact footprint.

Microsoft officials said that by sharing a familiar SQL Server syntax and common ADO.Net programming model with other editions of SQL Server, SQL Server Compact Edition allows developers and administrators to apply their existing skills and be immediately productive. The release candidate is available via download at http://www.microsoft.com/sql/compact.

And, finally, Microsoft announced the availability to MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) Premium subscribers of Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system on release to manufacturing.

Goldfarb said that Microsofts message to developers is that these new offerings in the Vista wave focus on three main concepts: security, integration and extensibility.

Next Page: AJAX development craze.

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