Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008
OVERVIEW
Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008 delivers on Microsoft’s vision of smart client applications by enabling developers to rapidly create connected applications that deliver the highest quality, rich user experiences. With Visual Studio 2008, organizations will find it easier than ever before to capture and analyze information to help them make effective business decisions. Visual Studio 2008 enables organizations of every size to rapidly create more secure, manageable, and reliable applications that take advantage of Windows Vista™ and the 2007 Office system. Visual Studio 2008 delivers key advances for developers in three primary pillars:
§ Rapid application development
§ Effective team collaboration
§ Breakthrough user experiences
This blog discusses the different customer experiences that deliver on these three pillars through the following seven technology areas.
§ Developing Smart Client Applications. Visual Studio 2008 delivers new and easy ways for developers to build smart clients. It provides a comprehensive set of tools and classes that simplify integrating smart clients with new or existing Web applications, and it enables local data caching for disconnected scenarios.
§ Creating Microsoft Office Applications. Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) is fully integrated into Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition. Developers can now customize various Office applications, such as Outlook® and PowerPoint®, to improve user productivity and simplify deployment.
§ Building Windows Vista Applications. Developers can easily leverage new platform technologies, and deliver more compelling applications to their customers, by effortlessly incorporating new Windows Presentation Foundation features into both existing Windows Forms applications and new applications.
§ Handling Data More Productively. The introduction of Language Integrated Query (LINQ) and other data-access improvements enable developers to apply a consistent programmatic approach to data handling, perform data access with new data-design surfaces, and use built-in classes for the occasionally connected design pattern.
§ Enabling New Web Experiences. Developers can easily create efficient, interactive Web applications with Visual Studio 2008. Seamless integration of the familiar ASP.NET AJAX programming model enables more efficient client-side execution, giving end users a more responsive Web interface. JavaScript IntelliSense and debugging further improve the development experience.
White Paper: An Overview of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 2
§ Gaining an Improved Overall Developer Experience. Visual Studio 2008 delivers a better developer experience overall through the combination of significant product quality improvements, and changes to the way the most popular design surfaces return errors to the user. In addition, Visual Studio 2008 simplifies the user’s ability to adopt the toolset and framework separately by enabling developers to target different .NET Framework platforms.
§ Improving Application Lifecycle Management (ALM). ALM features in Visual Studio provide great support not only for managing the entire software-development life cycle, but also for critical interaction with an enterprise application’s final end-users and IT stakeholders.
These three pillars in Visual Studio 2008 enable developers to:
§ Rapid Application Development. In Visual Studio 2008, developer productivity doesn’t end with the code editor and wizards. By providing new tools and frameworks to simplify the tasks of developers, designers, and database professionals for new application architectures and platforms, Visual Studio 2008 not only delivers a productive development tool, but also enables developers to tackle new business problems while decreasing the total cost of solution construction.
§ Effective Team Collaboration. Visual Studio 2008 enhances the end-to-end value of Visual Studio Team System by increasing its role-based coverage and delivering enhanced traceability throughout the software development life cycle. With deep integration across roles in the software life cycle and the Team Foundation Server, Team System enables customers to amplify the impact of their teams and improve software quality.
§ Breakthrough User Experience. As users look for new ways to comprehend and retain information, developers must still grapple with basic desktop and application security. Visual Studio, Windows Vista, and the 2007 Office system enable developers to deliver a safe, robust, and compelling user experience in any type of application.
These fundamental advances enable customers to rapidly create connected applications that deliver the highest quality, rich user experiences regardless of project complexity or organization size.
For the latest information about Visual Studio 2008, see the Visual Studio Web site (http://www.microsoft.com/vstudio).