Microsoft details new domain-specific modeling tools
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Microsoft has announced a new framework and tool for Visual Studio Team System to support the creation of service-oriented applications for various vertical industries.
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Editor&#39;s Summary: At a supercomputing conference, Microsoft announced a new tool kit that will let developers create high-performance computing applications.
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New plug-ins enable the IDE to accommodate newly popular dynamic languages.  Features include visual tools, test support and refactoring.
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New models include enhanced styling, storage.
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Microsoft on Wednesday reached another milestone in its multiyear Dynamic Systems Initiative when it released to manufacturing the latest version of its Microsoft Operations Manager.
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Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates touted on Monday Microsoft's plans to build a declarative modeling language that could greatly reduce the need to code.Speaking at Microsoft's 2008 Office System Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif., Gates acknowledged work was afoot on such an endeavor, although he described the effort as a five- to eight-year project.With the declarative language project, the goal is to make programming declarative rather than procedural. "Most code that's written today is procedural code. And there's been this holy grail of development forever, which is that you shouldn't have to write so much [procedural] code," Gates said. "We're investing very heavily to say that customization of applications, the dream, the quest, we call it, should take a tenth as much code as it takes today.""You should be able to do things on a declarative basis," Gates continued. But this has not caught on partially because of weak data models -- first codicil and then relational. Stronger data models since have emerged, such as rich schemas around XML as well as modeling work being done by Microsoft and others, Gates said. "We're bringing the data models up to be much, much richer, and we think in that environment, a lot of business logic can be done in a declarative form. Now, we haven't totally proven this yet. We're doing a lot of internal developments ourselves that way," including some Microsoft business applications, he said."We're not here yet saying that [a declarative language has] happened and you should write a ton less procedural code, but that's the direction the industry is going," Gates said. "And, despite the fact that it's taken longer than people expected, we really believe in it. It's something that will change software development but more like in a five- to eight-year timeframe than overnight," he said.Top Microsoft Technical Fellows, including Brad Lovering, are working on the declarative modeling language project, Gates said.A published report has referred to the project as the "D" programming language being built as part of the company's Oslo modeling project. But Gates did not specifically mention the name "D" or Oslo.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft is "very interested" in the Ruby programming language and also plans to expand its Expression design tools line, a Microsoft official said this week. During an Internet chat with InfoWorld, Forest Key, Microsoft director of Web and client user experience marketing for the company's developer division, acknowledged Ruby is on the company's radar screen. Asked if the company would accommodate the Ruby on Rails Web framework, which is based on Ruby, in Expression, Key said, "Ruby is currently more of a 'developer' concept for us." "We are very interested in Ruby and have lots of thinking going on," but nothing to announce at this time, Key said. He advised chatters to "stay tuned." Key added he was not the Microsoft person to comment in detail on this subject because he did not know the companyâs plans. One chatter expressed wishes for an IDE for Ruby on Rails from Microsoft. SapphireSteel, meanwhile, has shipped Ruby in Steel Developer, a Ruby environment for Visual Studio. Commenting on the future of the new Expression line, Key said the company was "just getting started with V1 (version 1) of the Expression Studio," which includes the suite of Expression tools. One area targeted for expansion is interaction design, which pertains to designing the actual interaction or structure of an experience rather than just designing the onscreen pieces. A goal is to better tie Visio, the company's diagram drawing software used by many interaction designers, to Expression and the company's Visual Studio software development platform. While Expression is for application designers and Visual Studio is geared toward the coding side of software development, Key said some features of Expression would turn up in Visual Studio. Software developers would want to use Expression, he said. The planned "Orcas" version of Visual Studio, for example, includes the same design surface for Cascading Style Sheets rendering as the Expression Web product, Key said. Orcas also has XAML capabilities, which are featured in the Expression Blend product. "There are some features that are only in Expression and vice versa, but we are really focused on giving all features to both audiences, just doing it in a role-specific way where everyone can be more comfortable and successful with the solution they are using," Key said. Microsoft believes in collaboration between designers and developers to build user experience-based applications and content, Key said. "If by Web 2.0 we are talking about great experiences that combine Web technologies, social computing components, services, the browser and components of the desktop such as richer graphics an integration with local data, etc, then you could say Expression is all about Web 2.0," Key said. Microsoft also plans more community-accessible content for both XAML and the Expression tools. Key said.
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The ADL Resource Libraries provide a complete object-oriented Document Object Model (DOM) for working with the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) and the IEEE 1484.1.1-2002 Learning Object Metadata (LOM) specification. These foundation resou   The ADL Resource libraries were developed under US government contract at the Joint ADL co-Lab to help facilitate the development of new innovative tools for the Development of SCORM courseware. These libraries are intended to proved foundational support for developers to begin building tools with a reduced barrier to entry into the marketplace.
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Systinet, Amazon, and Altova this week are announcing tools geared toward development of Web services, e-commerce, and XML applications, respectively.
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Microsoft has released tools designed to help enterprises deploy Windows Vista more easily.
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Microsoft outlined a new feature that will be included in Office 2008 for Mac.
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Microsoft issues free tools to create business reports its Exchange and customer relationship management applications.
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Microsoft late Tuesday released the first beta of its new Web design tool that will compete with the likes of Adobe Dreamweaver. The program is part of Microsoft's forthcoming Expression lineup, which also includes a graphical design tool and an interface designer.
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Service Pack 1 for the developers' toolkit for the second edition of Microsoft's just-in-time high-level language interpreter for embedded equipment was released yesterday.
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Microsoft on Monday added to an already dizzying array of planned Visual Studio 2005 offerings by unveiling a new version of the toolset for developers who fall between hobbyist and professional levels.
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The software maker expands its Visual Studio line of developer tools.
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Blog: At Enterprise 2.0 conference, Microsoft releases toolkit to enhance Web 2.0 tools in SharePoint.