Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0: Winning the Name Game
If no news is good news, then the news we got from Microsoft last week was
very good news indeed. Microsoft, you see, has released the official names of
the upcoming versions of .NET Framework and Visual Studio.
Don't get me wrong, sometimes a name can be news. Like when Microsoft revealed
to us that the name for WPF/E would be "Silverlight." Or when we all
learned that two of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's children
are named Trig and Track. That last example, I suppose, provides some comfort
as we learn that Microsoft is working to launch Visual Studio 2010 and .NET
Framework 4.0.
"We've got a name called Visual Studio 2010 and that's about all we've
got right now," said Dave Mendlen, director of developer marketing at Microsoft,
in our meeting. "We're not saying much more about schedule at this point."
As
reported by RDN Senior Editor Kathleen Richards, we're learning more
about Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) 2010, which until now was known by the
codename "Rosario." For instance, there will be three editions --
Architect, Developer and Test -- of VSTS, each tuned to a specific role. Notably
the Database edition, present in VSTS 2008, has been folded into the Developer
edition of VSTS 2010.
"Developers are more hybrid today than they were in the past. This need
to work not just with the core source code but also with the database is becoming
more and more important to them," Mendlen told RDN.
Microsoft working to provide cross-role functionality in its IDEs is hardly
surprising; we were all awake for the Expression suite launch, after all. What
was a bit surprising was the decision to discontinue Team Foundation Server
"Rosario" support for SQL Server 2005. VSTS lead Brian Harry, in
a blog post, cited the greatly improved Report Server functionality in SQL
Server 2008 as the reason for the move.
What we can expect to see is more sophisticated and dynamic integration across
these role-based editions of VSTS. So architects can create and manipulate dynamic
models that then may be used to perform "architectural validation"
of code at check-in. Or testers can capture code and system interactions during
the test process -- what Microsoft calls TiVo for test -- so developers can
essentially recreate and replay the issue in Visual Studio. Could it be the
end of the scourge of "It works on my box"?
Obviously, this is just the first trickle in what is likely to become a steady
stream of news regarding the next versions of Visual Studio and .NET Framework
from Microsoft. What new features or capabilities do you most want Microsoft
to concentrate on for these products? E-mail me at mdesmond@reddevnews.com.
Posted by Michael Desmond on 09/30/2008