As a developer, you use Visual Studio (VS) to build many flavors of applications for the .NET Framework. Typically, a new release of VS comes with a brand-new version of the .NET Framework, and VS 2010 is no exception—it ships with the .NET Framework 4.0. However, you can use VS 2010 to build applications for any .NET platform, including .NET 3.5 and .NET 2.0.
VS 2010 also includes an improved set of design-time facilities such as IntelliSense, refactoring, code navigation, new designers for workflows, Entity Framework–based applications, and WPF applications. Let’s take a look at how these features help database developers.
Multimonitor Support
VS owes a large share of its popularity to its integrated development environment (IDE), which is made up of language- and feature-specific code editors, visual designers, IntelliSense, auto-completion, snippets, wizards, controls, and more. This IDE is extended in VS 2010 to host the much-requested multimonitor support. Writing code with the .NET Framework requires you to mix designer windows with code windows while keeping an eye on things such as a database profiler, an HTTP watcher, a specification document, or an entity-relationship model. However, doing so requires monitor real estate, and reducing the size of the fonts employed is no longer an option. Having multiple monitors is a viable option because monitors aren’t very expensive and are easy to install. Many IT organizations are using dual monitors as a way to increase productivity and save time and resources.
Microsoft, in fact, has been supporting the use of multiple monitors at the OS level since Windows XP. The real pain was getting VS to detect multiple monitors and allow all of its windows, including code editors, designers, and various dialog boxes, to be dragged around outside the border of the IDE’s parent window. Web Figure 1 shows the Float option, which enables full multimonitor support in VS 2010. Once you select this option, you can move the window around the entire screen, and even move it to another screen.
A New Code-Writing Experience
Honestly, very few editing features in VS ever exceed developers’ expectations. In fact, to get an optimal experience, you probably want to use VS in conjunction with some third-party tools. However, what makes VS really great is the huge number of code-editing features it offers, and this number grows with each new release. VS still leaves room for third party products, which offer a lot of additional features, but VS offers a good-enough coding experience out of the box. And the quality of your out-of-the-box coding experience increases significantly with each new release.
In VS 2010, IntelliSense includes auto-filtering, which gives you the ability to display a context-sensitive list of suggestions. In this version, the list isn’t limited to an alphabetical sequence or to all names starting with the typed sequence. IntelliSense attempts to guess the context in which you’re operating and shows related suggestions, and it even understands abbreviations. For example, if you type WL in an IntelliSense window, it will match member names, such as WriteLine.
Refactoring is an aspect of development that has gained of lot of attention in the past few years. Refactoring is the process of rewriting the source code in a better way (i.e., adding testability, separation of concerns, extensibility) without altering the actual behavior. Originally associated with agile practices, refactoring is now a common, everyday practice for almost every developer. Because refactoring doesn’t add any new behavior to the code, it’s often perceived to be a waste of time and is neglected. In the long run, however, a lack of systematic refactoring leads to low-quality software or even project failures. VS 2010’s refactoring tools are an excellent way to speed up the refactoring process, making it affordable for nearly any development team.
Previous versions of VS offer a Refactor menu, but VS 2010’s refactoring menu is richer than ever. As Figure 1 shows, it comes with more refactoring options than earlier versions, and it offers a more powerful Find tool to help you resolve missing types, namespaces, and assemblies.
When you select an object in the code editor, it will instantly highlight all the references to that particular object, and it can also display the call hierarchy for an entity or a method.
With VS 2010, you can seriously consider not using a third-party tool to help you with your coding chores. However, VS isn’t the only product to improve in the number and quality of editing and refactoring facilities. In fact, it remains inferior to existing versions of commercial products. But if you’re never used a third-party refactoring tool, you’ll feel even less of a need for one in VS 2010. If you’ve accustomed to working with a refactoring tool, dropping it because of the new features in VS 2010 probably isn’t ideal—you might still want to use or upgrade your third-party tool.