Microsoft Offers Peek At Visual Studio 2010, .NET Framework 4.0

By Rick Whiting, CRN
September 29, 2008 2:45 PM ET

Microsoft is giving customers and channel partners their first look at the next generation of its Visual Studio and .NET Framework developer tools and platform. The move comes less than a year after Microsoft debuted the current releases of those products, Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5.

Application life-cycle management will be a key theme in the Visual Studio 2010 and .Net Framework 4.0, Microsoft said Monday. Visual Studio Team System 2010, code-named "Rosario," will "democratize" ALM by better integrating the stages of software development and eliminating what the company calls the siloed tasks carried out by core developers, testers, project managers, designers and business analysts.

Microsoft did not provide a date for when the new development tools would be ready.

Other focus areas for the new development tools will be enabling developers to take advantage of emerging trends such as cloud computing and more capabilities for developing what Microsoft called "breakthrough" departmental applications.

VSTS is an extended version of Visual Studio .NET with collaboration and communication features that allow development teams to coordinate their work. VSTS 2010 will make it easier for all members of a software development team to participate through the life cycle of a project.

VSTS 2010 will provide modeling tools for creating and using models to collaborate and graphically define business workflows and system functionality. It will support the Unified Modeling Language and Domain Specific Language. And new testing features will help integrate testing across the life cycle. Microsoft said it has also boosted the collaboration capabilities in the toolset's Team Foundation Server, making it easier for development teams to adopt Agile development processes.

Microsoft is also merging VSTS Development and VSTS Database in the 2010 release, a move the company said will improve integration across development life cycle tasks. Current Software Assurance customers that own VSTS 2008 Development Edition or VSTS 2008 Database Edition will receive both tools for free starting Oct. 1, plus Visual Studio 2005 Team System for Software Developers and Visual Studio 2005 Team System for Database Professionals.

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