Introduction:

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1(code name whidbey) is a major release for building future Microsoft. NET.connected applications for Microsoft Windows and the Web. After Visual studio 2002 and release of Visual studio 2003, this release also offers the following primary advantages:

         Radically improved developer productivity. Visual Studio 2005 contains integrated development environments (IDEs) for Microsoft Visual Basic, Microsoft Visual C#, and other programming languages, which include many features that make it faster and easier to develop software. These include edit marks, automatic saving of edits, improved rapid application development (RAD) features, and others. Visual Studio 2005 also contains improved graphical tools for specific application scenarios, such as Web page development and data access.

        Development of Applications in .NET Framework 2.0 : Unlike Visual studio 2003, which can run on .NET framework 1.0 as well as .NET Framework 1.1, Visual Studio 2005 beta can only run in .NET framework 2.0

       Development of applications that integrate with Microsoft SQL Server. 2005 Beta 2 or earlier versions of SQL Server, and development of managed code that runs inside of SQL Server 2005.There are lots of improvements in many areas of SQl Server.

Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 is the new version of the object-oriented programming

Environment used to develop applications ranging from traditional command-line or graphical user interface (GUI) applications to Web applications and XML Web services. The .NET Framework 2.0 base class library (BCL) supports backward compatibility with earlier versions and also offers some enhancements to classes to perform common programming tasks such as string management, data collection, database connectivity, and file access. In addition to these common tasks, the BCL includes many enhancements to namespaces that support a variety of specialized development scenarios, including:

 
1.   ADO.NET 2.0, which consists of classes for efficient data access.

2.   System.Xml 2.0, which consists of classes that enable you to read, write, manipulate, and transform XML.

3. Windows Forms 2.0, which consists of classes to develop rich-client Windows GUI applications.

4.  Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0, which consists of classes to build Web applications and XML Web services.

 
Software developers with experience with earlier versions of Visual Studio .NET will find many productivity enhancements in Visual Studio 2005.

Some of the most useful of these enhancements include:

 Edit marks

Visual Studio 2005 provides you with a visual indication of what has changed during the editing session. It distinguishes between the changes you have made that have not yet been saved and changes you have made during the current session that have been saved to disk.

 Code snippets and code expansions

Visual Studio 2005 comes with a library of code snippets for common programming tasks. Code snippet is the name used in Visual Basic, but in Visual C# and other languages, it is known as code expansion. You can insert a code snippet into your code to achieve a programming task, instead of searching the documentation or code samples for examples. You can also create your own code Snippets.

 Visual C# IDE refactoring tools

The C# IDE includes a suite of tools that automate many common code refactoring tasks. Developers can easily rename classes, fields, properties, and methods, extract code into its own method, reorder or delete parameters to a method, promote a local variable to be a parameter, encapsulate fields, and perform many other refactoring tasks. The tools ensure that when any change is made, all dependant modules are also updated.

 Visual Basic productivity enhancements

Visual Studio 2005 delivers a long-requested feature, which is the ability to correct programming errors during debugging and continue to run without restarting the program. There are many other productivity enhancements, including the MyServices abstraction. MyServices are a series of coded shortcuts that make it easier to find system and application resources. For example, code such as My.Computer and My.WebServices are programmatic shortcuts to system resources and Web service references respectively.

 Automatic and Manual Conflict Resolution Tool:

The Automatic and Manual Conflict Resolution Tool handles issues caused by multiple users working on different versions of the same file.

Whenever a team of developers are working on a project, conflicts in shared files are bound to happen. Team Foundation Server makes sure these conflicts don’t interrupt the software development lifecycle by providing a sophisticated conflict resolution tool.

The Conflict Resolution Tool allows teams to work in parallel and be assured that any potential conflicts are resolved easily and quickly.

 Atomic Checkins:

Team Foundation Server enforces atomic check-in to help maintain the integrity of files under source control. When a user checks in files to Team Foundation Server, all of the changes are collected into an atomic unit called Change Set. If a check in fails, then none of the changes collected in Change Set are committed. For example, if a check in fails while a user is adding several files to a project, Change Set collects this information but does not commit it—preventing incomplete information from being added to a project.

Atomic check-in also ensures that check-in policies are enforced and check-in notes are collected. As part of the check-in process, Change Set is checked against all policies and all mandatory notes are collected before a check in is completed. For example, if one file in Change Set violates a check-in policy, then no files in Change Set will be checked in.

 Undo checkout:

When a developer uses the undo checkout feature, changes to the code are abandoned, the checkout is cancelled, and the original file is not changed.

 Auto-Using:

The Visual Studio 2005 Integrated Development Environment (IDE) includes Smart Tag support for auto-using statements, which detect when your code is missing a using statement to qualify a data type—a common error that prevents IntelliSense from working.

For example, if you type Debug.WriteLine, a red indicator appears next to the statement when it is an unqualified data type. To qualify this data type, use your mouse to hover over the red indicator, click the Smart Tag icon to display a list of using statements, and then select either the appropriate using statement or the fully qualified name of the class that you want to work with.

 Branching:

Branching allows the creation of multiple similar code bases. A branch is a copy of all or part of a source code tree. Branches may be created for a number of reasons, including creating a test environment or adding new functionality that may cause an application to break.

Every branch that is created has its own copy of the code files and tracks its own incremental history separate from the original code base. All or part of a branch may be merged with the original source code in either direction. For example, a critical bug fix in the development branch could be merged into production, or tested functionality might be merged into the development code. Merge actions are also fully tracked by the code history.

Code management requirements can vary greatly and may need to be adapted for different organizations. Branching allows a great deal of flexibility in developing, testing, and updating applications.

Branching can be carried out from the Source Code Explorer in Visual Studio 2005 and is also supported by the Visual Studio 2005 command line tool.

 Bug List:

With Visual Studio Team System (VSTS), you can easily find, track, and view bugs by using the Bug List report. The Bug List report displays bugs in the current project and lists relevant information, including the bug name, current status, description, history, and who it is assigned to. Team members can find specific bugs and bug status by searching the report or using filters.

The Bug List report can be exported in several formats, including XML, comma delimited (CSV), TIFF, Adobe Acrobat PDF, Web Archive, and Microsoft Office Excel.

VSTS reports are stored on the VSTS server and are accessible through Microsoft Office applications, such as Excel and Microsoft Project, and Visual Studio 2005. The Bug List report can also be viewed as a Share Point list on the project Team Site.

 Better ASP .NET Source Code Editing:

With the Visual Studio 2005 source code editor, Intellisense and new features for formatting, navigating and validating your HTML markup are available throughout your files. You can control the way the HMTL code is formatted by default and any changes you make to the formatting will be preserved by Visual Studio. Moving around in long HTML files and editing them is much easier with new tools such as Tag Navigator and Tag Outlining. And now you can validate your code for a particular browser or coding standard in real time as you type. All of these features add up to a significantly faster and easier experience editing source code for your Web projects.

 Built-in SQL Server 2005 Express Support:

You can develop and debug database objects for your application in Visual Studio 2005—even if you don t have access to SQL Server 2005. SQL Server Express, a free lightweight version of SQL Server 2005, functions as a client database as well as a basic server database. With it you can use the same tools to develop and debug database objects that you use to develop the rest of your application. SQL Server Express replaces Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (MSDE), which was based on SQL Server 2000.

SQL Server Express is an ideal choice for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), server users, non-professional developers, Web application developers, Web site hosters, and hobbyists building client applications. If you need more advanced database features, SQL Server Express can be upgraded to more sophisticated versions of SQL Server.

 Caching Improvements:

Team Foundation Server is ideal for geographically distributed teams because of its server-based nature. The communication algorithms in Team Foundation Server account for latency between distributed sites and provide a caching proxy to minimize network traffic between these sites. Only the changes to these assets incur network traffic; all other operations are serviced by the local cache.

One of the biggest advantages that both data and output caching provide to the Web developer is the ability to avoid incurring the cost of processing or retrieving expensive resources on each request. One of the most expensive resources is the trip to the database, so caching is especially useful for storing in-memory copies of datasets or cached versions of pages that are data driven.

Visual Studio Team Foundation Server addresses the main benefits of replication—performance and reliability—without introducing actual replication and its associated problems.

This increases the performance and scalability of the system. Performance improves because you re serving content from memory, rather than from databases or re-processed pages; scalability improves because you re no longer expecting the processor and file system (or database) to be accessed for every page request.

 Check-in Notes:

With Team Foundation Server Check-in Notes, administrators may collect data from users during the check-in process.

With Team Foundation Server Check-in Notes, administrators may collect data from users during the check-in process. This data is permanently recorded in Change Set.

An administrator sets up the check-in notes and associates the notes with the root of a project. When a user checks in files to that project, they are prompted to enter the required information in the Check in Notes dialog.

Check-in notes are optional by default. To change settings for check-in notes, right-click the project name in the Team Explorer pane, select Team Project Settings, and then select Source Control.