LOS ANGELES—Microsoft Corp. rounded out the second day of its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2003 here by formally announcing the new versions of Visual Studio .Net, codenamed Whidbey, and SQL Server, codenamed Yukon, as well as giving out prerelease versions of the software to attendees.
Eric Rudder, senior vice president of servers and tools at Microsoft, introduced the Whidbey technology, which he said will help developers more easily build applications for the Web, mobile devices and service-oriented applications, among others.
Rudder said Microsofts community efforts helped shape the direction of Whidbey, which is the version of Visual Studio .Net that will support the Longhorn version of Windows. The product is largely customer-driven, he said.
“Were listening,” Rudder told a packed audience of developers hanging on every word and every click of several demonstrations of new technology in the upcoming development environment. Whidbey is due to ship in the middle to second half of next year, Rudder said.
Among the new features in the product is an automatic update feature, along with 5,279 samples added so far to the base product, Rudder said.
Other features include support for generic iterators, partial types, code refactoring, C++ templates with Common Language Runtime (CLR) types, XML documentation, edit-and-continue, support for 64-bit processors, a new deployment technology called ClickOnce, and a new Web services designer called Whitehorse.
“We expect people to transition gradually,” Rudder said. He encourages developers to “move to managed code now; it will make your move to Longhorn smoother.” And he also encouraged developers to “think about using Web services as a wrapper.”
In addition, Rudder said Microsoft added several languages to .Net, including Delphi, F#, P#, Zonnon and a language called Pizza.
Rick LaPlante, general manager of Microsofts Developer Division, demonstrated the Whitehorse Web services design tools that feature a drag-and-drop design environment to connect Web services and model applications then validate then against the deployment environment using Microsofts System Definition Model (SDM).
LaPlante called Whitehorse “a new set of service-oriented application designers.”
“This is the first part of delivering Microsofts Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI).
Meanwhile, Microsoft spelled out the enhancements coming in Yukon such as support for Transact-SQL, Visual Basic .Net and Visual C# .Net, support for XQuery and XML, as well as enhanced tools developing applications.
Rudder also laid out a roadmap for upcoming servers and tools. He said BizTalk Server 2004, Microsofts upcoming e-commerce suite known as Jupiter, Visual Studio Whidbey and SQL Server Yukon will be available in 2004. The Longhorn Server will be available in 2005, he said.
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