Microsoft to integrate Windows Live tools into Visual Studio
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Microsoft is planning to include the ability for developers to add Windows Live services to applications in the next version of Visual Studio.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft revealed the official names Monday of the next major upgrades to its Visual Studio software development tools platform and its SQL Server database, which will be called, simply, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008. The company announced these names during the Microsoft TechEd 2007 conference in Orlando, Fla., which began on Monday. The Visual Studio upgrade had been codenamed "Orcas," while SQL Server has had the "Katmai" code name. Visual Studio 2008 is due for general release at the end of 2007, said Steve Guggenheimer, general manager of the applications platform at Microsoft. A second beta release of the product is due later this summer, featuring Visual Studio Shell, which enables developers to build and distribute custom tools built on the Visual Studio IDE. A first beta was released on April 26. The Visual Studio upgrade focuses on development of Web-based applications as well as on Windows and Microsoft's Office suite, Guggenheimer said. "This release is very much oriented toward supporting the Vista and Office release as well as the Longhorn Server release," of Windows, said Guggenheimer. The company announced in May that Longhorn will be called Windows Server 2008; it, too, is due later this year. Even though it will ship in 2007, the Visual Studio upgrade will bear 2008 in its nameplate because that is when Microsoft expects most people will buy it, Guggenheimer said. SQL Server 2008, meanwhile, will ship around the middle of 2008; a first Community Technology Preview was made available at TechEd, accessible here. The new database will offer improvements for enterprise scalability and business intelligence, including reporting technology from Dundas Data Visualization. Microsoft announced its acquisition of Dundas products on Monday morning. Microsoft at TechEd also said it has released Community Technology Previews for BizTalk Services, which is a hosted offering to enable SOA across the Internet, and the .Net Framework 3.5. The framework includes Microsoft's Windows Communication Foundation technology for Web services, Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, and CardSpace, for digital identities. Microsoft has said .Net Framework 3.5 will feature improvements in scalability, performance, and the Common Language Runtime. Microsoft also reported it will deliver BizTalk Server 2006 R2, for business process management, in the third quarter of this year, featuring RFID infrastructure, native support for EDI, and technologies to integrate .Net Framework 3.0, the 2007 Microsoft Office System, and Windows Vista. Beta 2 of the product is available now. Also at TechEd, presentation layer development tools maker Infragistics announced its NetAdvantage for WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) software will support Visual Studio 2008. This NetAdvantage product provides user interface controls to work with WPF. Also, Infragistics is working on Project Aikido, which is a series of ASP.Net server controls for Web 2.0 applications. Aikido leverages technologies such as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), HTML and Cascading Style Sheets. Infragistics also will show prototype controls geared to work with Microsoft's Silverlight 1.1 multimedia display technology. Featured as part of the company's NetAdvantage for Silverlight product, controls have been built for charting, image scrolling and scroll panel, which contains UI elements such as button. Parasoft at TechEd announced the upcoming release of Parasoft Test 4.0, intended to help development teams boost productivity on the Microsoft .Net Framework. Parasoft 4.0 automates best practices intended to increase development team productivity and software quality. Test ensures that .Net code works as expected by enabling coding policy enforcement, static analysis and unit testing. Featured in Version 4.0 is a streamlined manual code review process. Also featured is Bug Detective, for static code analysis to identify paths that could trigger runtime defects. A Code Review module in Version 4.0 automates the code review process. This module benefits distributed development teams who cannot logistically participate in physical code review sessions, Parasoft said.
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At a conference for users of its Project software, Microsoft demonstrated a variety of features that likely will be in the next version of the project management application.
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The software maker expands its Visual Studio line of developer tools.
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Microsoft has previewed &quot;Whitehorse,&quot; a set of visual design tools intended to support the design and validation of Web services-based applications.
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Microsoft (Quote, Chart) announced another entry in its line of .NET development tools, adding Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition to the mix.
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Microsoft exec announces new tool designed to make patching simpler.
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Higgins-project developers are creating a tool equivalent to Windows CardSpace but need Microsoft's go-ahead for certain features.
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Although Microsoft is at least 18 months away from releasing its Windows server virtualization tool, code-named Viridian, Redmond on Thursday released software that does what market-leader VMware&#39;s apps cannot.
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Avanade on Monday is partnering with Microsoft to release Enterprise Library, which features reusable code, tools, and guidance intended to make it easier to develop in the .Net environment.
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The Windows Live family got two new members on Tuesday, when software giant Microsoft launched &quot;managed&quot; beta releases of Windows Live Folders and Windows Live Photo Gallery.
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Microsoft Corp. introduced two new  online services to its Windows Live line-up on Tuesday and said  it plans to release more Web offerings this year to beef up its  Internet strategy.
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Microsoft Corp introduced on Wednesday  a suite of Windows Live online services bundled into a single  download in its latest effort to compete with Google Inc&#39;s  growing array of applications delivered over the Web.
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Microsoft acknowledged Tuesday that developers looking to build applications on Windows Vista will need to upgrade to Visual Studio 2005 SP1, highlighting compatibility issues the company is dealing with as the new operating system nears release.
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During an early morning session on Thursday, Microsoft program manager Chung Webster introduced developers to some of the basic concepts of building Silverlight-capable Web applications, including the creation of customizable video controls.  The tools Webster used were the Beta 1 edition of Visual Studio 2008, the current beta of Expression Blend 2, and the Silverlight Alpha 1.1 version which uses Web services and C#.
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Microsoft releases developer tools for creating Xbox games as part of a push to create a YouTube-equivalent for video gamers.
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Microsoft unveiled plans Wednesday to integrate business intelligence reporting into the next version of SQL Server, placing new reporting tools in the hands of end users.