Windows Presentation Foundation of Vista gets proper support in VS 2008

Tag : database management system
Officially available since February, there are two differentfamilies of VS 2008. The first is designed for teams of programmersand is divided into five editions: Team System Architecture,Database, Development, Test and Team Suite. These five editions canbe installed standalone, while a comprehensive edition – VSTeam System 2008 Team Suite – combines them all.
The other family targets standalone programmers and comes inStandard and Professional Editions. Mindful of freely availableLinux tools that have driven up the number of applicationsappearing for Linux platforms, Microsoft has also released fourfreely downloadable Express Editions of VS 2008 – Visual WebDeveloper, Visual Basic, Visual C# and Visual C++.
Our tests looked chiefly at VS 2008 Professional, but we alsochecked out some features of VS 2008 Team System, running theProfessional edition on a Dell Precision M50 workstation, and theTeam System edition on a system running Windows Server 2003Enterprise Edition.
After installing VS 2008 Professional, developers shouldimmediately notice a revamped, cleaner user interface and toolbars.They will also notice the absence on the main menu of the Communitydropdown and the addition of a new Test dropdown. The Communityoption has been integrated into the Help dropdown, as an MSDNForums option.
The first time VS 2008 ran, a screen offered to import any earlierenvironment settings from previous versions of Visual Studio. Weopted to import settings from Visual Studio 2005 to VS 2008,including fonts and colours, the window layout and the file pathsto commonly used add-in components. For developers running the TeamSystem Edition of VS 2008, not all settings will transfer to the VS2008 Professional edition as the team version has features notfound in Professional.
When creating a new project, developers can import files fromearlier versions of Visual Studio or create a native VS 2008project. Developers can choose to target three different .NetFrameworks, depending on which system they are writing applicationsfor. The .Net Framework contains pre-written code libraries fordevelopers in a wide range of areas, for accessing databases orwriting web applications, for example. Vista uses .Net Framework3.0 while Windows Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 both haveversion 3.5.
Multimedia applications
In VS 2008, the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) of Vista nowgets proper support, which lets programmers write better multimediaapplications. We found programming visually rich applications nodifficult task, and there is a split-window allowing programmers toview the Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) code WPFuses, allowing them to edit while the changes are reflected in theGUI above. However, programmers will need to collaborate moreclosely with graphic designers and multimedia professionals toreally get the best out of the technology.
Interactive and web applications will also work across most popularbrowsers now that ASP.Net Asynchronous Java and XML (Ajax)applications can be written. Web protocol support for buildingWindows Communication Foundation services – such as Ajax,JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), Representational State Transfer(Rest), Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and Advanced Tool forOption Modeling (Atom) – has also been added to .NetFramework 3.5, with full tool support for WCF also being includedin VS 2008, along with support for the new workflow-enabledservices technology.
Also new in .Net Framework 3.5 is Language Integrated Query (Linq),which gives programmers access to different data types throughLinq-enabled programming languages. Using Linq, programmers can nowwrite code to query SQL databases, for example. Linq supportsaccess to the following data types: Objects, which could beconsidered the default option; the three data types contained inADO.NET – Datasets, Entities and SQL; and finally XML data.
As an exercise, we wrote code in C# to read in an XML data filecontaining the activation keys for software accessible through ITWeek’s MSDN TechNet account, printed out a list of those keysassociated with the requisite software package, and then wrotethese values to a SQL Server database. The power of Linq is that itobviates the need to use SQL queries to access SQL databases, orXQuerys to access XML, or complex code to access other data types.
One drawback is that the only SQL database currently supported isSQL Server, but community developers or third-party vendors maywell provide Linq access
to other databases such as MySQL in future.
One omission developers will notice is the absence of the J#language, mainly due to its declining use by developers. Usersstill needing to use J# will have to use the standalone J# packageor continue using the earlier Visual Studio 2005 suite.
Support for J# will continue through to 2015 as perMicrosoft’s product lifecycle strategy.
Developers wishing to target smart devices and Office 2003 or 2007applications will need to purchase either the Professional or TeamSystem editions of VS 2008, since the Express and Standard Editionsdo not support such code development.

Windows Mobile 5.0 support
A new feature in VS 2008 targets Office applications such as Excel,InfoPath, SharePoint and Word. Although Visual Studio 2005supported Smartphone 2003 and Pocket PC 2003 devices, VS 2008 addssupport for Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC and Windows Mobile 5.0Smartphone devices.
We found it easy to create a Smartdevice application targeting theWindows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC SDK and using the .Net CompactFramework, although coders also need to install ActiveSync todeploy the application to the device. We were also able to downloadWindows Mobile 6 SDKs from Microsoft’s Mobile DeveloperCentre that are not available natively in VS 2008 Professional.
Another new feature in VS 2008 Professional is the Test feature,which allows programmers to check that their code exhibits expectedbehaviour. In the Team System Edition, there is also the extraAnalyze feature. This contains options to run code analysis, andalso has a Profiler, which is very useful for checking if there areany performance bottlenecks in specific program areas. We wouldlike to see the profiling tool made available in the VS 2008Professional Edition for the benefit of smaller organisations thatcannot afford the relatively costly Team System Edition of VS 2008.
Two other VS Team System features are the Team Foundation Server(TFS) and the Load Test Agent. TFS is the back-office server pieceof Team System, responsible for giving programming teams controlover source code, project management, reporting features andcollection of test data. There is also a client – TeamExplorer – for programmers who need to access the data.
In conclusion, VS 2008 looks like a must-have for Windowsdevelopers, although the Team System version is costly and probablyonly relevant to large programming teams. Throughout our evaluationwe encountered no crashes, although given the size of the suite itis difficult to comprehensively test during the time allowed, andthere have already been problems reported some Microsoft forums.