DEVELOPMENT TOOLS: Microsoft VS.NET 2003 Pro

There are several features in this release of VS.NET to look forward to. It has support for the Microsoft.NET compact framework, which will allow developers to build applications for Pocket PCs, Pocket PC phones and other smart devices. To aid this development, it has added a Pocket PC emulator so that you can test your code without actually having these devices. It also supports advanced Web services standards such as WS-Routing, WS-Security and WS-Attachments. Plus, it supports SOAP 1.1 and has (WSDK) Web Services Development Kit. Server Explorer has been added to the interface.

This gives you direct access to the server-side resources such as databases, message queues, event logs, Windows services and Crystal reports.

The Pocket PC emulator lets you test the applications you develop for Pocket PCs. The software also supports various standards for different mobile devices

ASP.NET mobile controls (earlier called Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit) aids in mobile applications development. It's used to build interfaces for mobile devices, and it supports a range of standards for different devices, including WML 1.1 for WAP-enabled cellphones, compact HTML for i-mode phones, HTML for Pocket PCs and pagers. 

VS.NET 2003 is fully backward compatible with VS.NET 2002. For example, when you open a VB project, the wizard for backward compatibility will automatically make the necessary syntax changes and convert the VB 6.0 forms to Windows forms. The COM and COM+ based components can also be referred in VS.NET 2003. 

VC++.NET 2003 adheres to ISO C++ standards more stringently than the previous versions of VC++. The STL (Standard Template Library), ATL (Active Template Library) and MFC (Microsoft Foundation Class) that come with VC++ .NET 2003 have reduced security flaws. A feature called Code Access Security prevents malicious code from being executed on you machine.

VJ#.NET has syntax similar to Java language, and this helps Java developers to build .NET applications. Java developers can also migrate Java applications to the .NET environment, using VJ#.NET. But applications developed using VJ#.NET will not run on a separate Java Virtual Machine; they will run only in the .NET framework.

There are minor improvements in VC#.NET 2003, such as a better C# debugger and native support for pagers and PDAs. 



The Bottom Line: Given the number of features and enhancements, it is definitely worth upgrading to the new version of
VS.NET. 

Sushil Oswal