Visual Studio 'Whidbey' Details Emerge

The next release of Visual Studio, code-named Whidbey, will address concerns that led some Visual Basic developers to hold off on upgrading to .NET, and adds performance-tuning features of particular interest to ISVs. However, no details have been announced about how the company intends to implement support for the next release of SQL Server or respond to the acquisition of modeling tool vendor Rational by IBM.

Whidbey is timed to coincide with the release of SQL Server “Yukon” and its most anticipated new features will let developers create SQL Server procedures using the .NET Framework and languages such as C# and Visual Basic (VB). The company is not expected to divulge details of these features until its Professional Developers Conference, which begins Oct. 26, 2003, in Los Angeles.

VB Leads the Way

With the Whidbey release of VB, Microsoft hopes to entice developer holdouts to migrate to the .NET Framework by reintroducing a couple of important features that VB developers have come to rely upon, but which were absent in the initial releases of Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET).