Microsoft Visual Studio 2008

Visual Studio Product Roadmap

Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008 (formerly known as, Microsoft® Visual Studio® code name “Orcas”) delivers on Microsoft’s vision of smart client applications by enabling developers to rapidly create connected applications that deliver the highest quality rich user experiences. With Visual Studio 2008, organizations will find it easier than ever before to capture and analyze information so that they can make effective business decisions. Visual Studio 2008 enables any size organization to rapidly create more secure, manageable & reliable applications that take advantage of Windows Vista and the 2007 Office system.

Visual Studio 2008 delivers key advances for developers in three primary pillars:

Improve Developer Productivity

In Visual Studio 2008, developer productivity doesn’t end with the code editor and wizards. By extending this concept to application architectures and the underlying platform, Visual Studio 2008 delivers not only a productive development tool but also enables developers to tackle new business problems while decreasing the total cost of solution construction. In Visual Studio 2008, developers, designers and database professionals will see new tools and frameworks become available to simplify their tasks.

Manage the IT Life Cycle

Visual Studio 2008 enhances the end-to-end value of Visual Studio Team System by increasing its role-based coverage and delivering enhanced traceability throughout the software development life cycle. With deep integration across roles in the software life cycle and the Team Foundation Server, Team System enables customers to amplify the impact of their teams and improve software quality.

Employ the Latest Technologies

As users look for new ways of comprehending and retaining information developers must still grapple with basic desktop and application security. Visual Studio, Windows Vista and the 2007 Office system enable you to deliver a safe, robust and compelling user experience in any type of application.

Visual Studio 2008 achieves these key advances through a wide array of innovative product improvements, such as:

Handle Data More Smoothly

With the introduction for Language Integrated Query (LINQ) and improvements to ADO.NET, developers can now deal with data using a consistent programmatic way and with new design surfaces and support for the occasionally connected design pattern.

Enable New Web Experiences

Beyond the secure, reliable & extensible infrastructure of IIS, developers can easily create Web applications with more interactive, more responsive and more efficient client-side execution using the seamless integration and familiar programming model of ASP.NET AJAX and other extensions & enhancements.

Improve Application Life-cycle Management (ALM)

Visual Studio 2008 provides great support for not only managing the entire software development life cycle, but also the critical interaction with the final end users and managers of an enterprise application.

Target Windows Vista and .NET Framework 3.0 Development

Developers will be easily able to leverage new platform technologies and deliver more compelling applications to their customers by effortlessly incorporating new Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) features into both existing Windows Forms applications and new applications.

Create Microsoft Office Applications

Visual Studio Tools for Office is now fully integrated into Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition enables developers to customize any Office application, from Outlook to PowerPoint, to improve end user productivity and significantly improving deployment.