Software

• Microsoft

Achieve higher levels of database scalability with SQL Server 2005 (64-bit), the enterprise-class database optimized to run on x64- or Itanium-based servers and Microsoft Windows Server 2003. The 64-bit features are available on SQL Server 2005 Standard, Enterprise, and Developer editions.

Main Features

• Ideal for the part-time or occasional developer to develop and deploy client-server based Windows, Web, SmartPhone, and Pocket PC applications
• "Drag and drop" user interface designers for virtually every type of application; Master Pages support for maintaining a consistent look and feel across Web applications
• Edit and Continue for simple, intuitive debugging; integrated ClickOnce support

• Complete development environment with comprehensive application development features, including improved visual designers, code editors, and programming languages for optimum productivity.
• Build tools that extend the Visual Studio Integrated Development enviroment using the Visual Studio Software Developers Kit.

Visual Studio 2005 combined with ASP.NET 2.0 offers an improved environment for publishing and administering a Web site. View larger.

The new ClickOnce application deployment technology makes deploying a desktop application as easy as deploying a web application. View larger.

The Solution Explorer now makes it easy for you to clean up unwanted files. View larger.

With Visual Studio Pro 2005's powerful, enterprise-class application platform, you can also easily create and deploy client applications, and automatically publish and maintain applications and their dependencies with integrated ClickOnce support. With more than 50 new controls and hundreds of built-in services for site security, personalization and look and feel, Visual Studio Pro 2005 gives you the tools it takes to build fast, interactive Web applications. Enhanced visual designers and editors speed up development times significantly, while intuitive visual designers help to improve your XML editing and XSLT debugging. In short, you can tackle just about any development task, whether its creating dynamic, data-driven applications using an integrated data access, design, and reporting environment, or creating robust applications using the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, the .NET Compact Framework 2.0, and native code -- all supported by Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. You can also easily develop for 64-bit systems using a 64-bit version of the .NET Framework.

Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition includes Microsoft Visual Basic, Microsoft Visual C#, Microsoft Visual C++, and Microsoft Visual J# programming languages; tools for building Windows and Web solutions; SmartPhone and Pocket PC development tools for building Windows CE-based applications; Visual Database tools; advanced debugging tools, including cross-machine debugging; and much more.

Cross Machine Debugging and Better Web Publishing
Visual Studio 2005, combined with ASP.NET 2.0, offers an improved environment for publishing and administering a Web site. With the built-in publishing features, such as integrated File Transfer Protocol (FTP), you can keep files in your local project and synchronize them with files located on a remote Web server. Visual Studio automatically logs copied files which helps you to identify whether the remote site has been updated with the latest files. And to help protect your site and your IP, you can pre-compile a Web site to publish only executable code, no source files, to your production server. The Web site configuration interface makes it easy to set up and maintain applications, and the new Web Site Administration Tool helps you manage remote sites. You can manage cache settings at the server and Web site level to improve the performance of your published Web sites. And users can manage their own sites with the new ASP.NET Microsoft Management Console (MMC) plug-in.

The Solution Explorer in Visual Studio 2005 also makes it easy for you to clean up unwanted files. Simply choose Clean Solution from the Build Menu and all the intermediate files and output directories in your whole solution will be removed. For Visual C++, you can also use the Project Only submenu of the Build Menu to clean only the project currently selected in Solution Explorer, without cleaning any project dependencies or solution files. Other features include a new checksum feature that matches multiple source file names without any confusion; provider-driven application services that let you extend the powerful features of Visual Studio Team System by adding your own ASP .NET application services seamlessly, giving you complete control over the tools and environment.

• Desktop-based solution for developers working alone or in small teams
• Easily return to a previous version of a file; Unicode and XML support
• Provides users with remote Web access over HTTP

• Robust set of tools for building database solutions; easy to upgrade
• Enhanced SQL language capabilities; extensible new output architecture
• Build stand-alone and remote applications for Windows-based Tablet PCs

Extending visual design capabilities to the server is easier than ever with Visual Studio .NET 2003. The Component Designer provides a canvas for building and instantiating business logic components using the familiar drag-and-drop paradigm. In addition, the Server Explorer delivers direct access to server-side resources, including databases, message queues, event logs, Windows Services, Crystal Reports, and performance counters.

Visual Basic .NET 2003 delivers the most productive route to professional application development. Familiar Visual Basic syntax, expressive coding constructs, a powerful background compiler, and unsurpassed support for productivity within the code editor enable you to crank out software in record time. The fully modernized Visual Basic language supports Structured Exception Handling and optional power features including object-oriented constructs and multi-threading.

Five main development tools comprise Visual Studio:

• Visual Basic 6.0 helps you create applications quickly. Visual Basic excels at creating attractive graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and custom front ends for databases. It's also an easy way to create component object model (COM) resources. Visual Basic is a popular, relatively easy-to-learn tool for general-purpose Windows programming.

• Visual C++ 6.0 is Microsoft's low-level development environment for C and C++ software. Oriented around the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), Visual C++ puts the least overhead between your programs and Windows, meaning they will (if properly designed and implemented) run faster than programs written in any other Microsoft environment. It's great for games, device drivers, and other solutions in which top performance is more critical than ease of development.

• Visual J++ 6.0 allows you to write software in a variant of Java tailored to the Windows environment. Visual J++ stand-alone applications aren't platform-independent as true Java applications are, unless you're careful to avoid the Windows-specific classes, which is hard to do. Some developers prefer its object orientation scheme to that of other Windows development languages.

• Visual FoxPro 6.0 supports the FoxPro language, with which you can build applications that refer to databases. Because this environment supports COM and distributed COM (DCOM), it's possible to build FoxPro applications that access databases and other computational resources across a network.

• Visual InterDev 6.0 is the ultimate tool for developing Internet resources that fit the Microsoft Document Object Model (DOM). While Visual InterDev's power really shows when you're writing for an intranet based on Internet Explorer 5, you can use it to create platform-independent pages suitable for open Internet sites. You'll be happy with Visual InterDev as a means of creating browser interfaces for your back-end databases, COM objects, and other Microsoft componentry.

On top of the primary development tools (which are well integrated by common interface elements and an ability to share components), Visual Studio ships with a considerable supporting cast of goodies. Visual Studio Installer enables you to write installation scripts for your software. Visual SourceSafe helps development teams manage large projects by managing code check-in and check-out chores. Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE) is a freely distributable Structured Query Language (SQL) server that's compatible with Microsoft SQL Server 7.0, so you can build distributed SQL applications for growing workgroups without having to buy SQL Server right away. You get quite a bit of documentation and training material too.

To put it simply, Visual Studio 6.0 is the best tool you'll find for efficiently creating Windows applications that can interact with the network resources as well as the Windows environment. This is the tool of choice for working inside Microsoft's COM framework. If you're familiar with the Microsoft architecture (or know you want to learn it) and want the latest tools for building within it, this is the most cost-effective way to outfit your workstation with everything you need. --David Wall

True, you can use C++ (written in Microsoft Visual C++ or some other environment) to write programs that execute faster. You can use Visual J++ or a Java IDE if you like that style of object-oriented programming. But there's little debate that Visual Basic offers the best balance of feature richness, ease of use, and performance. Furthermore, if you have a bit of familiarity with fundamental programming concepts (you know something about control structures, have a handle on data structures, and have some idea of what object orientation is all about), you'll find that Visual Basic has a relatively flat learning curve. It rewards experimentation, and plenty of fine documentation exists.

Visual Basic supports all of Microsoft's solutions for database access, distributed computing, componentized software, and half a dozen other major software applications. You can use Visual Basic to write Component Object Model (COM) objects, ActiveX Controls, ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) for database access, and WebClasses to provide customized responses to events that occur during Web sessions. The professional edition supplements the standard Visual Basic features with visual tools for creating database schema on Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases. The Professional Edition also integrates with Microsoft Visual SourceSafe and the rest of Microsoft's tools for development of software by teams. --David Wall