By Greg DeMichillie [bio]
Posted: Dec. 17, 2007

The following an excerpt of a Research Report published by Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm focused exclusively on Microsoft strategy & technology. More samples of our content, as well as a list of upcoming articles and reports are also available.

Visual Studio 2008 is the latest release of Microsoft's flagship developer product. Along with the accompanying release of the .NET Framework 3.5, Visual Studio 2008 includes significant new features that help developers access data; brings Visual Studio up to date with new features introduced in Windows Vista, the .NET Framework 3.0, and Office 2007; and further improves Visual Studio as a Web development tool.

Because virtually every corporate application accesses and updates relational data of some sort, the feature most likely to gain the attention of corporate developers is Language Integrated Query (LINQ). LINQ allows Visual Basic and C# developers to access data from XML and relational databases in a way that most will find substantially quicker and simpler to code, less error-prone, and easier to debug and maintain.

Other new features, such as support for creating applications built on Office 2007 and improved JavaScript debugging, will appeal to developers working on specific types of applications.

While Visual Studio 2008 is a significant release for developers, Visual Studio Team System (VSTS), Microsoft's application life-cycle management product that provides collaboration between developers, testers, and other members of the software development process, offers only modest enhancements and developers will likely have to wait until 2009 to see major improvements in VSTS.