Visual Studio 2008 release by end November, Sync Framework announced

Christmas comes early

By Tim Anderson, 5th November 2007

Customer Success Testimonial: Recovery is Everything

TechEd, Barcelona Microsoft has announced that Visual Studio 2008 will be available to MSDN subscribers "by the end of November 2007". I'm a little disappointed not to find the RTM build here at Tech-Ed, but that's not long to wait.

Along with Visual Studio we get .NET Framework 3.5. The package includes LINQ (Language Integrated Query), and full designer support at last for WPF (Windows Presentation Framework) as well as WF (Workflow Foundation) and WCF (Windows Communication Foundation). It has taken a year since the first release of Vista to provide proper developer support for the frameworks that shipped with it.

S Somasegar, corporate vice president of the developer division, also announced the first preview of the Microsoft Sync Framework. Mary Jo Foley has a good summary. Interesting, given that building online/offline synch into applications can be challenging. You can download it here. The description says it is "a comprehensive synchronization platform".

He also has a few stats. He said:

Over one million professional developers use Visual Studio 2005
17 million downloads of Visual Studio Express
25 per cent of Visual Studio developers are using Visual Studio Team System

This last statistic is higher than I expected. I spoke recently to a Team System early adopter, who told me that while he was not exactly disappointed with it, nevertheless he had come across significant problems. His biggest issue was that you can't manage work items across team projects, making it difficult for developers involved in several different projects. He also found the integration with Office poor, and the lack of a full Web UI frustrating. Nothing more than you would expect for a version one release.

Finally, Somasegar mentioned a new release of Popfly Explorer with "an easy way to add Silverlight gadgets built in Popfly to web pages," to quote from the brief press overview.

A freelance journalist since 1992, Tim Anderson specialises in programming and internet development topics. He has columns in Personal Computer World and IT Week, and also contributes regularly to The Register. He writes from time to time for other periodicals including Developer Network Journal Online, and Hardcopy.

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Posted Thursday 8th November 2007 19:51 GMT

Anonymous Coward

Another Beta for Industry to test?....I'll get my coat...

I'm hoping this won't be just another force of another latest greatest technology onto everyone driven by the marketing and sales arms of Microsoft.

I've been using their products to deliver system for the last 10 years and they never seem to get a product finished before it's deemed obsolete.

Yes, I earn my living using VS2005 but if it did as they say on the tin I'd spend more time relaxing rather that conjuring workarounds to incomplete/buggy technologies that yes, are miles better than 5 years ago, but don't quite deliver the promised article before being phased out.

I will not be using this product for any client work that my business reputation relies on until at least Service Pack 1 is rolled out....Probably November 2008...I learned the hard way by early adopting VS2005

The hardware suppliers must be rubbing their hands together for the impending upgrades required as the current range of 3Ghz Core 2, 2GB RAM PCs will just be too slow to run this Behemoth.

I just can't wait for all the "New and Shiny" guys in the office to tell me how great it is....and how we've all been doing it wrong for the last 20 years....