Microsoft has finally dropped its Visual J++ Java development system. However, it appears to be focusing instead on XML and not the Cool tool it had originally envisaged as the successor to J++. For the time being, J++ isn't going away. While there's a strong likelihood that it will be pulled from the Visual Studio suite, according to Microsoft sources cited by Computing, J++ itself has been licensed to tools developer Rational Software, which will continue its development. Of course, Microsoft has been mulling the end of J++ ever since it lost its legal row with Sun over the 'purity' of its Java support. In April, Visual C product manager Jeff Ressler said of J++: "We continue to sell it, and apps built with it will not be subject to any limitations, but its future is not [definite]." Immediately after that, Microsoft began touting an alternative to Java of its own devising, news of which emerged back in February (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/2769.html). Codenamed Cool, the anti-Java system was a programming framework providing series of extensions to C++ providing hooks into Windows 2000's COM+ (Common Object Model). The idea was to make C++ as easy to code as Java. According to the Computing report, however, the upcoming Visual Studio 7 relies heavily on XML, and uses a mix of extensible mark-up language and HTTP to invoke methods and objects remotely. How much of Cool will make it to Visual Studio 7 remains to be seem. Cool was to have been officially released earlier this autumn (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/6667.html), but it seems likely that the increasing shift in the Internet industry towards XML may well have persuaded Microsoft that Cool's time is past. ®