Close
  • Latest News
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Video
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Networking
  • Cybersecurity
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Storage
  • Sponsored
  • Mobile
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Logo
Logo
  • Latest News
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Video
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Networking
  • Cybersecurity
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Storage
  • Sponsored
  • Mobile
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Development
    • Development

    Visual Studio Celebrates 10th Year, Sets Road Map for Future

    Written by

    Darryl K. Taft
    Published March 27, 2007
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin

      eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.

      SAN FRANCISCO—Microsoft threw itself a party and celebrated the 10th anniversary of its Visual Studio tool set by acquiring a new component that will find its way into the next version of the product.

      At the VSLive conference here, Prashant Sridharan, senior product manager for Visual Studio at Microsoft, delivered a keynote address touting the 10-year history of Microsofts flagship tool and announced the companys acquisition of devBiz Business Solutions and its TeamPlain Web Access technology. TeamPlain is a Web interface for Microsofts TFS (Team Foundation Server) that allows managing work items, documents, reports, and source control repositories.

      “This gives us a Web front end to everything in TFS,” Sridharan said. “This product is free for download for all Team Foundation Server customers. In the interim well ship it as a Power Tool, and well make it part of Orcas” when that ships. “Orcas” is the code name for the next major release of Visual Studio.

      “We looked at how customers were using TFS,” and they were coming in through Microsofts Excel, Project and Team Explorer, said Michael Leworthy, a product manager in the Visual Studio Team System group at Microsoft. “So when we looked at TeamPlain, we saw it as a great way for customers to access TFS, and we made the decision to acquire that technology.”

      Sridharan said the 10-year anniversary of Visual Studio also marks his 10th year at the company.

      “We shipped Visual Studio 97 in February 1997,” he said. But that product was not even a unified IDE (integrated development environment), Sridharan said. However, Version 6.0 of the product began to build on the vision of a unified IDE.

      And “Visual Studio 2002 brought that IDE story to the forefront” by integrating lots of new functionality into the product, Sridharan said. Yet, the new functionality that enabled developers to do more with the tool set also led to collaboration problems, as the scope and complexity of the applications increased.

      Microsoft addressed this in Visual Studio 2005 and is doing more to address it in Visual Studio Team System and in the upcoming Orcas release, the company said.

      “Orcas is all about programmer productivity, team collaboration, and the latest and greatest platform technologies like LINQ [Language Integrated Query] and AJAX [Asynchronous JavaScript and XML],” Sridharan said.

      In his keynote, Sridharan also talked about Rosario, the version of Visual Studio Team System that follows the Orcas release.

      “Rosario is centered around organization and collaboration,” Sridharan said. “Well also focus on QA [quality assurance] and testing—doing for testers what weve done for developers over the years.”

      Also, Sridharan said throughout the rollout of both Orcas and Rosario, Microsoft will be “looking at what Team System tools we can migrate down” and put into the professional version of Visual Studio. For instance, unit testing and code coverage are migrating down to the professional product, he said.

      /zimages/3/28571.gifClick here to read more about Rosario.

      Sridharan said the launch of Visual Studio 2005 was his favorite because he had a lot of involvement with it. But the first .Net version of the product, Visual Studio 2002, was perhaps the products most important launch.

      “Bill Gates demo-ing the product on Valentines Day of 2002, that was a seminal moment in Microsofts history, and a seminal moment for Visual Studio and for developers,” he said.

      /zimages/3/28571.gifRead here about Microsofts latest Visual Studio release.

      There are more than 1 million professional developers using Visual Studio, and there have been more than 10 million downloads of Visual Studio Express. according to Sridharan. In addition, 25 percent of all Visual Studio Team System users are using Team Suite, the suite of life cycle tools that provides each member of a core software development team with the most comprehensive collection of tools for software design, development and test, he said.

      Moreover, Microsoft has had more than 1 million forum posts on MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) since the launch of Visual Studio 2005, “and weve fixed over 400 user suggestions; thats a testament to our transparency initiative paying off,” Sridharan said.

      Next Page: Road map for professional developer products.

      Page 2

      Meanwhile, Microsoft has launched a new road map for its professional developer products. The Orcas release is expected by year end, according to a blog post by Scott Guthrie, a general manager in the Microsoft Developer Division.

      There will be a second beta of Orcas in the middle of this year, Microsoft said. And the Orcas release of Team System will feature Visual Studio Team Suite, Team Edition for Software Architects, Team Edition for Software Developers, Team Edition for Software Testers and Team Foundation Server.

      The Orcas release will also feature “code metrics to show cyclomatic complexity calculations,” Leworthy said. “This tells a developer if their code is too complex and will provide suggestions on how to make it simpler,” he said. In addition, with this information, developers can identify complex and error-prone code and prioritize it for testing.

      In addition, the release will feature profiler support for WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) applications to enable profiling of WCF-based applications to improve application performance, Leworthy said. The product also will enable developers to customize and extend code correctness policies, Leworthy said

      There are also many new features for testing, including Web test validation rule improvements, better Web test data binding and improved load test results management, and the Web Test recorder now records AJAX requests and JavaScript pop-ups.

      Moreover, TFS features continuous integration and build improvements to enable members of a team to integrate their work frequently, automate builds and integrate tests to detect integration errors as quickly as possible, Leworthy said. It also features support for multithreaded builds with the new MSBuild.

      Some of the major scenarios and features in the Rosario version of Visual Studio Team System will include joint prioritization and management of IT projects through integration with Microsoft Project Server; project management across multiple projects for proactively load-balancing resources according to business priorities; full traceability to track project deliverables against business requirements and the ability to conduct rapid impact analysis of proposed changes; comprehensive metrics and dashboards for shared visibility into project status and progress against deliverables; new features to enable developers and testers to quickly identify, communicate, prioritize, diagnose and resolve bugs; and integrated test case management to create, organize and manage test cases across both the development and test teams, the company said.

      /zimages/3/28571.gifClick here to read Peter Coffees analysis of Visual Studio Team System.

      In addition, Rosario will feature testing automation and guidance to help developers and testers focus on business-level testing rather than repetitive, manual tasks; quality metrics for a “go/no-go” release decision on whether an application is ready for production and has been fully tested against business requirements; rapid integration of remote, distributed, disconnected and outsourced teams into the development process; easy customization of process and guidance from Microsoft and partners to match the way customers teams work; and improvements to multiserver administration, build and source control, Microsoft said.

      “Its been a great 10 years,” Sridharan said. “Developers are the best customers you can ever market to or build products for.”

      Asked about competition from the Eclipse open-source development platform, Sridharan said Visual Studio stacks up well feature-for-feature against Eclipse, but he said he believes the Visual Studio ecosystem is stronger and more vibrant.

      “We dont just build products, we help companies build businesses,” he said.

      /zimages/3/28571.gifCheck out eWEEK.coms for the latest news, reviews and analysis in programming environments and developer tools.

      Darryl K. Taft
      Darryl K. Taft
      Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.

      Get the Free Newsletter!

      Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis

      Get the Free Newsletter!

      Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Artificial Intelligence

      9 Best AI 3D Generators You Need...

      Sam Rinko - June 25, 2024 0
      AI 3D Generators are powerful tools for many different industries. Discover the best AI 3D Generators, and learn which is best for your specific use case.
      Read more
      Cloud

      RingCentral Expands Its Collaboration Platform

      Zeus Kerravala - November 22, 2023 0
      RingCentral adds AI-enabled contact center and hybrid event products to its suite of collaboration services.
      Read more
      Artificial Intelligence

      8 Best AI Data Analytics Software &...

      Aminu Abdullahi - January 18, 2024 0
      Learn the top AI data analytics software to use. Compare AI data analytics solutions & features to make the best choice for your business.
      Read more
      Latest News

      Zeus Kerravala on Networking: Multicloud, 5G, and...

      James Maguire - December 16, 2022 0
      I spoke with Zeus Kerravala, industry analyst at ZK Research, about the rapid changes in enterprise networking, as tech advances and digital transformation prompt...
      Read more
      Video

      Datadog President Amit Agarwal on Trends in...

      James Maguire - November 11, 2022 0
      I spoke with Amit Agarwal, President of Datadog, about infrastructure observability, from current trends to key challenges to the future of this rapidly growing...
      Read more
      Logo

      eWeek has the latest technology news and analysis, buying guides, and product reviews for IT professionals and technology buyers. The site’s focus is on innovative solutions and covering in-depth technical content. eWeek stays on the cutting edge of technology news and IT trends through interviews and expert analysis. Gain insight from top innovators and thought leaders in the fields of IT, business, enterprise software, startups, and more.

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Advertisers

      Advertise with TechnologyAdvice on eWeek and our other IT-focused platforms.

      Advertise with Us

      Menu

      • About eWeek
      • Subscribe to our Newsletter
      • Latest News

      Our Brands

      • Privacy Policy
      • Terms
      • About
      • Contact
      • Advertise
      • Sitemap
      • California – Do Not Sell My Information

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      © 2024 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×