Microsoft Adds Testing Tool for Windows Server 2008
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Microsoft is launching free software to make it easier for developers to create software compatible with Windows Server 2008.
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Fat lady goes back to trailer Two months after releasing a "feature complete" third Windows Server 2008 beta, Microsoft has added new features to the planned operating system's code base.â¦
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TechWeb - Microsoft has released the community technology preview of PerformancePoint Server 2007, a key component of the software maker's business intelligence suite.
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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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US software maker Microsoft has announced the availability of a combination of tools, prescriptive guidance, training and technical support for customers that are considering migrating from Novell NetWare to Microsoft Windows Server 2003.
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Microsoft is now seeking beta testers for its Windows Home Server software, which was unveiled last month at the Consumer Electronics Show and is set to ship before September.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft released the beta of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 to a private group of testers, taking one step closer to the anticipated official launch in the first quarter of next year. In late August, Microsoft for the first time offered a release schedule for the long-awaited SP1. At the time, the software giant said the beta would become available this month to between 10,000 and 15,000 testers. One beta tester, Brandon LeBlanc, author of the Windows Experience blog, has already written about his experience with SP1. In addition to a couple of minor user interface changes, he has noticed improvements to the overall responsiveness of his PC and laptop, which both got the beta software. He particularly noticed that resuming activity after the machines hibernate and copying files from one directory to another work faster. LeBlanc also reported improved battery life on his laptop. SP1 also appears to have solved some wireless networking issues he had, which caused his computer to lose connectivity often, especially after the laptop was hibernating. Since he installed SP1, that problem has gone away, he said. Microsoft had promised that SP1 would include a speedier resume function following hibernation. It also said the update would include improved performance of Internet Explorer 7, particularly for Web sites running AJAX. Microsoft will distribute SP1 via Windows Update, its automatic update service. Alternatively, corporate administrators can use a standalone version of SP1 in conjunction with other programs they may use to distribute software to computers. Also on Monday,Â Microsoft released the initial Release Candidate (RC0) of Windows Server 2008, code-named Longhorn. That means customers can download and try out the latest version of Windows Server 2008, including for the first time a preview of Viridian, Microsoftâs virtualization technology. The release of the RC0 means that development and testing are progressing and that the server code is entering the final stages of testing, Microsoft said. Last month, Microsoft pushed back its forecast for the release of Windows Server 2008 from this year to the first quarter of next year.
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Microsoft Corp. on Friday released its second Community Technology Preview of SQL Server 2005 and rolled out a new, free tool to manage SQL Server 2000 and MSDE (Microsoft Desktop Engine) 2000.
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Microsoft has released tools designed to help enterprises deploy Windows Vista more easily.
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Early version of first significant Vista update released to testers. Also, near-final "release candidate" version of Windows Server 2008 to be available within 24 hours.
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Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) has taken steps to help enterprise developers who want to test their applications against Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2).
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New virtual-machine technology can be used to test software patches and migrate aging Windows NT applications. By John Foley, Paula Rooney, CRN.
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Microsoft has released the June Community Technology Preview of Windows Server 2008, which serves as an interim release between Beta 3 and Release Candidate 1. The company says Beta 3 has already been downloaded over 200,000 times in the two months since its release.
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(InfoWorld) - AutomatedQA on Monday is unveiling its TestComplete 5 application testing environment, which adds support for Windows Vista applications. Built for automated testing, TestComplete 5 makes development of tests easier, according to the company. In addition to Vista, TestComplete 5 supports Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 Web tests as well as testing of Windows Presentation Foundation, .Net and Java applications. The Java system must be running under Windows. "What TestComplete is, is a full IDE for automated testing," featuring functional and load testing, said Drew Wells, vice president of AutomatedQA. Tests can be recorded and played back. Developers can build user-defined forms to be displayed during test execution. Built-in controls assist with developing forms that ask testers to select scenarios or to specify test conditions. TestComplete is able to read the name of an object, such as a form, as designated by the original developer. This provides for better communication for subsequent developers, who can rely on the name of the object instead of using object or screen coordinates. Other features include: ** The capability to test applications under different user accounts. This enables an administrator to grant different levels of access for security purposes. ** Enhanced name mapping to recognize Win32, .Net, VCL (Visual Component Library) and other objects. ** Improved integration with AutomatedQA's AQtime performance profiler and memory debugger. ** XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) support. TestComplete 5 integrates with Microsoft's Visual Studio environment. While AutomatedQA believes Microsoft over time will add to its own products the type of testing AutomatedQA enables, the company is undaunted. "The object is to stay ahead of them, which we've done for a while and will continue to do," Wells said. Available now, TestComplete 5 costs $999 for the enterprise version, which includes Web testing and log testing.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. has released another test version of an update to its virtualization software, which will be built into the next version of the Windows Server OS. On Thursday Microsoft released Beta 2 of Virtual Server 2005 Release 2 Service Pack 1 (R2 SP1), an update that will add new functionality to the existing version of Virtual Server 2005 once it is generally available. The software, which should be in full release by the first calendar quarter of 2007, can beÂ downloaded for free. New features included in Beta 2 of the software are support for Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s virtualization technology, as well as new integration with Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft said. The software also includes what is called a Volume Shadow Service, which improves the server backup process, according to Microsoft. Instead of scheduling downtime to back up each virtual machine individually, the software will take snapshots of physical machines. Those physical machines will in turn take snapshots of all the virtual machines on the physical host. This enables server administrators to keep virtual machines up and running even while backing them up. Beta 2 of Virtual Server R2 SP1 also includes new offline virtual hard disk (VHD) mounting, which enables customers to view and manipulate files in a VHD without having to start a virtual machine. This enables administrators to easily deploy scripts and perform virus scans across VHDs without having to start each virtual machine, Microsoft said. Microsoft introduced Virtual Server in October 2004. The product enables virtualization of Windows so multiple instances can run simultaneously on one server as if they were running on multiple servers. Microsoft has said virtualization capabilities that are available in its Virtual Server 2005 product will be built into the next version of Windows Server OS, code-named Longhorn, which is slated to be available sometime next year.
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The party is on for February 27th, as Microsoft confirms its star attraction, Windows Server 2008, will be released on time. Admins everywhere may now be breathing a sigh of relief.
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Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 could now be released in March or April of next year.