If it's spring, it must be time for Microsoft TechEd. TechEd 2006 has been
in full swing all week in Boston. I couldn't attend this year's festivities,
so I'm not going to address any of the big announcements at TechEd 2006. (You
can read about TechEd 2006 in WinInfo Daily UPDATE at
http://www.windowsitpro.com/departments/departmentid/906/WinInfo_Daily_UPDATE.html.) However, I would like to touch on three other important announcements made this week.
First, Microsoft announced the release of the Community Technology Preview
(CTP) of the Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals. This
upgrade to the client-based Visual Studio Team Suite includes new database
management and design tools. The CTP illustrates that the Team Suite isn't a
static set of tools. These tools are still being developed and enhanced, and
more are on the way. The CTP also illustrates that the tools are well-integrated with Visual Studio 2005 and are Microsoft's latest step toward
integrating database development with application development. One challenge
in developing large applications has been the somewhat disconnected world of
the database. As database development becomes better integrated with Visual
Studio 2005, developers need to understand this portion of development.
The tools in the CTP version of the Team Edition for Database
Professionals can be grouped into three areas. And I'm hoping that there will
be a fourth area in the final release.
The tools in the first area integrate your database objects with Visual
Studio 2005. For example, you can leverage Visual Studio 2005's refactoring
capabilities on a database object. Let's say you change a column's name. You
can have the Team Edition for Database Professionals automatically search out
and update every other reference to that column in the database's stored
procedures.
The tools in the second area integrate your database with Team Foundation
Server to automatically keep your scripts and database objects under version
control. Even better, the tools go above and beyond version control. Not only
can you import your current database schema directly into the source control
system, you can, after you've made some changes, ask the source control
engine to generate change scripts based on the differences from the current
implementation and what you last imported or released. This is a very cool
feature.
The tools in the third area are for testing purposes. The Team Edition for
Database Professionals uses an interface to leverage the unit-testing tools
that are available in other Team Editions. Thus, you can perform automated
unit tests of stored procedures, which lets you treat your database
components the same way you would treat any other component in your overall
system.
So, what is on my wish list? I'd like to see Microsoft include a really
good query analyzer in the final release of the Team Edition for Database
Professionals. I'd like to have a query analyzer that reviews a stored
procedure or dynamic query and explains why the combination of that query and
the tables it accesses creates performance problems. For example, I'm
currently working with a company that recently outsourced the creation of a
new version of one of its applications. The company got back an application
that looked fine, had the requested features, and seemed OK in testing. But
in production with an increased user base, performance problems surfaced. As
a result, the company has canceled the rollout, except to a small percentage
of customers. And the company is scrambling with duct tape and bailing wire
to keep the new version up and running for those few customers. The query
analyzer on my wish list would go a long way in figuring out the problem with
that application. Of all the diagnostic tools that developers could really
use, this query analyzer is No. 1 on my wish list.
Because Microsoft expects to officially release the Visual Studio Team
Edition for Database Professionals at the end of this year, I doubt if my
dream query analyzer will be included. As with the other Team System
packages, you can purchase the Team Edition for Database Professionals
separately and not have to buy the Visual Studio Team Suite. For more
information about the Team Edition for Database Professionals, go to
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/teamsystem/products/dbpro.
The second announcement I want to mention concerns a move that will
further equalize the playing field of all developers by increasing confusion.
In his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2006/06/09/624300.aspx, Soma (S. Somasegar) announced that the WinFx technologies are being moved
under the .NET product namespace. The result will be Microsoft .NET Framework
3.0. It's important to note that .NET Framework 3.0 won't include C# 3.0, but
instead will rely on C# 2.0. C# 3.0 is expected to be released with Visual
Basic (VB) 9.0, which will be part of .NET Framework 4.0 (or whatever
Microsoft will call the next version of the Framework that will be released
with Orcas, the next version of Visual Studio). Also note that the upgrade
path from ASP.NET 2.0 in the .NET Framework 3.0 release will be painless
because it will remain ASP.NET 2.0. Given the nature of this information,
it's easy to understand why Microsoft chose to announce it through a blog
rather than an official press release.
Finally, I like to tell you about Project Glidepath. This project is an
evangelistic effort oriented toward providing materials to small partner
companies to speed building applications on the Windows Vista platform. The
Project Glidepath site went live on June 14. You can land on that Web site by
going to http://www.projectglidepath.net.
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