Enhancements in Visual Studio 2005

The enhancements that are coming up in the next version of the .NET Framework, version 2.0, include Generics, Iterators and Partial Types and

ADO.NET.

Now Visual Studio 2005 is out. We look at some of its features, specifically enhancements in the IDE and Whitehorse (the new suite of graphical design tools).

Project System Enhancements: What's new in the IDE



Previously you had to create Web projects by going to File>New>Project and then selecting the Web Application project item. But now things have changed for couple of reasons:

l FrontPage Server Extensions are no longer required to build Web projects. In fact, you don't even need to create project files under wwwroot folder for testing them. You can create the project and work on it in any file system folder

l Visual Studio has now got a built-in Web server that hosts ASP.NET internally. This implies you can test your Web applications without deploying them to IIS, from within the IDE. If you have tried the ASP.NET Web Matrix application, you'll find that similar functionality is available here too 

You can create different types of projects. Right from the conventional WinForms to SmartPhone, SQL Server 2005 database projects and WinCE based applications, all are within the IDE. And yes, office projects are included too.

Also there is support for code refactoring. Refactoring is about having support to clean up the way you write code and format (from programmatic perspective) the code better. The refactoring support, for instance, makes it possible to make a code snippet get converted to a method, without doing Ctrl+X, Ctrl+V, and also without writing even a single line of code. It takes just three to four clicks!

SDLC Support: Riding Whitehorse



Whitehorse are the designers, a part of the Burton initiative, which bring diagrammatic application design and deployment support into Visual Studio 2005 amongst other things like:

l Deployment diagrams that allow you to check your application design before deploying the application. You can get to know if the application will work upon deployment or not, right from within Visual Studio



l Support for new and improved source-control management system



l Built-in support for unit testing and code coverage. Visual Studio is now also the tester's IDE 



l Performance testing



l Checks for conformance to design guidelines






Gaurav Khanna  is with Microsoft, India