- +
Ticked Off at Tick the Box Mentality 04/02/2008 13:01:15
Does your executive search firm know the difference between an MIS manager and a CIO, and if it does, can it explain that difference to its corporate clients?Does your executive search firm know its MIS managers from its elbow? Does it even know the difference between an MIS manager and a CIO, and if it does, can it explain that difference to its corporate clients? - +
How to Get Real About Strategic Planning 04/02/2008 12:50:59
Everyone agrees that having a strategic plan for IT is a good thing but most CIOs approach the process with fear and loathing. In fact, the majority of CIOs (and the enterprises they work for) are faking it when it comes to strategic planning. Isn't it time we all got real?Oh, it must be nice to be the CIO of a FedEx or a GE or a Credit Suisse. Places where IT and the business are so tightly aligned you can barely tell the two apart. Where corporate leaders understand that IT is a strategic asset and support it as such
Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services. Cutting printer costs
How to Beef Up Your Sales Pipeline
Web Security SaaS: The Next Generation of Web Security
Realizing the Value of Unified Communications
Understanding Email Marketing: A Guide for SMBs
Best Practice in Building an Integrated Information Management Strategy
Enterprise Wireless WLAN Security
Did you GET the memo? Getting you from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 Security
Zones provide focussed content from Computerworld and leading technology partners.Newsletter Subscription
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (VS08) is the current incarnation of the company's long line of IDEs. It's the premier IDE for developing applications with the Microsoft .Net Framework and, at least, a contender for the best Windows-hosted C/C++ IDE. Of course, Visual Studio 2008 isn't limited to developing desktop applications; it is also good for developing Web, SOA, and device applications.
VS08 comes in a range of editions, from the free Express Editions to the US$10,000 does-everything Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite. Basically, the Express editions are for beginner, student, and hobbyist developers; Standard Edition is for individual developers; Professional Edition is for advanced developers and those who work in small teams.
Team System is primarily for larger teams. There are Team System clients for developers, architects, DBAs, and testers, as well as a combined client for all roles called Team Suite. The server for Team System is Team Foundation Server (TFS), which combines a team portal, version control, work item tracking, build management, process guidance, and business intelligence.
In this review, I'll concentrate on the features of VS08 Professional Edition, and touch on a few of the highlights of Team Suite. I won't try to discuss Team Foundation Server as such, although it has received numerous enhancements, such as a new team build system and Web access, since we last reviewed it. (See Tom Yager's May 2004 preview of Visual Studio 2005).
Installation and testing
For review purposes, I used three installations of VS08: Professional Edition installed on a Windows Vista for x64 laptop along with Expression Web and Expression Blend; Team Suite installed on a Windows XP desktop along with Visual Studio 2005 (VS05), without access to TFS; and Team Suite installed in a Windows Server 2003 Virtual PC along with TFS. Ninety-day trial versions of all of these versions are available from Microsoft's Web site.
I have blogged at some length about my trials and travails installing Team Suite. None of that should affect you, unless you try to uninstall VS08 from a machine that also has VS05; nevertheless, making an image backup of your system before you start your installation might be wise. Expect a VS08 installation to take several hours, with one manual intervention required to start the documentation installation step.
I ran the VS08 Team Suite on my XP desktop almost all day, five days a week for several weeks, and tried to use it for all my development work. I also ran through a number of individual development scenarios with the Professional Edition on the Vista laptop, and simulated a few group development scenarios on the Team Suite/TFS virtual PC. One caution: If you install on Windows Vista with User Account Control (UAC) enabled, be prepared to run VS08 as Administrator a few times until all the required directories have been created; after that, it should be fully UAC-compliant.
Introducing .Net Framework 3.5
VS08 is the first version of Visual Studio to support .Net Framework 3.5. It is also the first to target multiple versions of .Net Framework (2.0, 3.0, and 3.5). Previous versions of Visual Studio supported only one version of .Net Framework, forcing developers to either maintain multiple versions of Visual Studio or to upgrade all their projects to the current version of .Net Framework. Multi-targeting is a welcome enhancement; it is included in Standard Edition and above.
I wish Microsoft had gone a little further in this direction. It's too bad that Microsoft didn't also provide targeting for .Net Framework 1.1 and easy bidirectional conversion between VS08, VS05, and Visual Studio .Net 2003 projects.
.Net Framework 3.5 has a number of new class library and language features. These include Language-Integrated Query (LINQ), Web 2.0 and SOA-related enhancements, integrated workflow, peer-to-peer protocols, and Microsoft Office support.
The tooling for all of these is found in VS08. So, for example, VS08 Standard and above have LINQ support in Visual Basic .Net and Visual C#, including an Object Relational Designer, the SQLMetal command-line tool, LINQ-aware code editors, and debugger support.
Computerworld Member Login
Prioritizing Services with IT Service Management (ITSM)
Computerworld Live Webinar
Wednesday 20th, August 2008
11:00am EST (Sydney, Australia)
To be repeated on:
Thursday 4th, September 2008
11:00am EST (Sydney Australia)
Sign up and receive a free copy of The Forrester WaveTM Service Desk Management Tools, Q2 2008 at the conclusion of the Webinar.
Attend and discover:
- How to deliver value to your business through ITSM
- Best practice ITSM implementation
- Why emphasis is changing from optimizing IT management processes to better servicing customers and demonstrating real dollar value
- If service-oriented ITSM is best for your business
- +
Computerworld Live Podcast #97: The Future of Enterprise Networking 25/07/2008 09:45:36
This week CW Live chats with Mark Thompson, global sales and marketing manager for HP ProCurve, on the future of the enterprise networking. Mark discusses the trends we can expect to see in the near future and how the right infrastructure can ensure your enterprise network is secure. - +
Computerworld Live Podcast #96: Security at the Edge 11/06/2008 09:22:22
CW Live speaks with Amol Mitra, HP ProCurve Director of Marketing for Asia Pacific and Japan. Today's topic: how enterprises are starting to shift away from simply controlling security via server logins, firewalls and moving to more adaptive security frameworks. - +
Data Management Edition #10: Multi-Petascale Systems 02/05/2008 09:12:33
This week we look at sustainability and the development of multicore technologies to build multi-petascale systems. - +
IT Security Edition #11: How to poison the Storm botnet 01/05/2008 08:51:55
This week CW Live presents a case study on how to poison the notorious Storm botnet . Plus we take a look at Cisco's plans for Ironport. - +
IT Security Edition #10: Cyber-battles fought and won 24/04/2008 11:09:47
Vendors bow to end user pressure to improve product security, and we take a look at the latest concepts shaping the cyber-battlefield of the future.
Viva la Verticals! Key to Vendor Growth is Through Vertical Market Opportunities, Says IDC 2008-09-05 11:05:00+10
F-Secure delivers fastest protection in the online world 2008-09-04 16:50:00+10
NETGEAR expands ProSafe team as business-class products take off in SME market 2008-09-04 16:27:00+10
Rogue security apps dominate Fortinet's Aug 2008 IT threat report 2008-09-04 16:00:00+10
Adaptec Intelligent Power Management Reduces Storage Power Consumption Up to 70 Percent 2008-09-04 11:28:00+10
Microsoft 2008 Mission Critical IT
To help you deploy the new Microsoft '08 technologies into your mission-critical environments, EMC and Microsoft have developed and validated a number of reference architectures. Discover the benefits of leveraging these skills.
