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Visual Studio 2005 Flavors Abound
Visual Studio .NET gets two new add-ins with Web Services Enhancements 2.0 and the Office Information Bridge Framework.
by Jim Minatel
Tech•Ed, May 24, 2004
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
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Ballmer with VS Senior Product Manager Prashant Sridharan
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Speaking to approximately 10,000 attendees in his opening keynote at Microsoft's Tech•Ed conference in San Diego, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer amplified the company's top priority of security and announced Web Services Enhancements 2.0, Microsoft Office Information Bridge Framework, and the new Visual Studio Team System and its integrated development, testing, and deployment tools. However, he provided no pricing, licensing, or release date details at this time. Also notably absent from the announcement was any reference to the timing for the first Visual Studio 2005 beta.
Ballmer introduced two new developer tools that integrate into Visual Studio .NET. The first, Web Services Enhancements 2.0 (WSE 2.0), gives developers a more secure system for building and consuming Web services with Visual Studio .NET 2003. WSE 2.0 uses the OASIS security standard WS-Security to define how to provide end-to-end Web services SOAP security. With support for Kerberos, integration with Active Directory authentication and authorization, and improved WSE integration with VS.NET 2003's configuration editor and policy wizards, developers should find the new tool easier to use to build secure Web services in their environments. WSE 2.0 is available in a release version now.
The second tool, Microsoft Office Information Bridge Framework (IBF), also adds in to Visual Studio .NET and gives developers an easy way to use Microsoft Office as a smart-client front end to services created with WSE 2.0. With IBF, Microsoft continues to push Microsoft Office as a front end for application developers and hopes developers will use the existing user interface (UI) they are familiar with as the foundation for internal applications. The IBF consists of several components for end users and developers. First, on the client side, IBF requires Microsoft Office 2003 Professional Enterprise Edition. Users interact with IBF applications through a Smart Tag in their Office documents that opens a Windows Form with the application.
IBF's second component is the Information Bridge Metadata Designer plug-in to Visual Studio .NET, which helps developers visualize and create the application and UI. The developer tool ties tightly to the security model in WSE 2.0, ensuring that the security policies and roles defined in WSE 2.0 applications are enforced on the desktop in IBF. The third component of IBF, the Information Bridge Metadata Service (MDS), provides the conduit to get the data from the line-of-business applications to the client through a Web service. Developers also get a set of prescriptive design guidelines from Microsoft for developing IBF applications. IBF is available now in beta 1; no timeline was provided for final release availability.
Enterprise software developers, testers, and IT professionals will all benefit from the new Visual Studio Team System (see "Put the Team in Lifecycle Management" for product details). Billed as a lifecycle development tool, Visual Studio Team System offers new tools for static analysis, code coverage, and unit testing all designed to enhance application security. Ballmer said that many of the security advances in Visual Studio 2005 come from Microsoft's own research into making its own applications and development more secure. The integrated security testing tools in Visual Studio 2005 provide all VS 2005 developers with the same security advantages employed internally at Microsoft.
Visual Studio Team System also incorporates workflow management to define the workflow in application development and testing across all roles in the lifecycle. Policy management ensures all team members and projects abide by the defined workflows and testing policies an organization defines. The underlying management tools, dubbed Team Foundation, also include change management, reporting services, and project management.
These three technology announcements give developers and IT managers many new options to consider. But, enterprise developers and IT departments will need to see more details about Visual Studio Team System—including pricing, a beta, and eventually final release versions—before determining if this toolset is right for their organizations.
About the Author
Jim Minatel is the Wrox Press editor for Microsoft tools and languages as well as Web standards at Wiley Publishing.
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