Whidbey to Improve Developers' Access To Back-End Data

The new features of the IDE, code-named Whidbey, are part of Microsoft's plan to design Whidbey specifically to work with the next-generation SQL Server, code-named Yukon.

Whidbey also will include improved editing capabilities and schema transformation for XML, Microsoft program manager Paul Yuknewicz said at a Whidbey demo at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.

Whidbey contains a new form called DataSource that acts as a homebase for back-end data sources, allowing developers to easily view what sources are available. Developers then can easily access a source, such as a database, business object or Web services, through a wizard, Yuknewicz said.

The new IDE also includes a wizard for data queries, allowing developers to build new query quickly and easily for Web-based applications that access back-end data sources, he said.

To facilitate Web site development, Whidbey also allows developers to build a local file path to the Web site, rather than requiring them to go through Microsoft's Web server, IIS, or an FTP server, Yuknewicz said.

On the XML side, Whidbey will include syntax validation for XML to help developers edit when XML code is not used properly in documents, he said. The validation allows developers to see where there are errors in XML code, particularly where certain tags are not properly defined.

Whidbey also will transform XML schemas from document type definition (DTD) to XML schema definition language (XSD), Yuknewicz said.

Schemas are a standard way to express shared XML vocabularies and allow applications to carry out rules defined by developers. XSD is a more evolved schema than DTD, which was used in the early days of XML.

Whidbey also will be able to take an XML fragment and transform it into an XML schema, he said.

In addition, Whidbey will make it easier fordevelopers to edit large XML files, something that is difficult in the current version of Visual Studio.Net, Yuknewicz said.