New Microsoft Dev Platform Goes 'Live'

Microsoft made available "Go-live" versions of its upcoming integrated-development and data management platform on Monday. New preview releases of Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2, Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Beta 2 and the SQL Server 2005 April Community Technology Preview (CTP) have been shipped to customers.

Customers are encouraged to obtain a special End User License Agreement (EULA) that authorizes applications developed using the software to be installed in production environments.

Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005, formerly code-named "Whidbey" and "Yukon," are tightly-woven development suites that can be used to integrate database systems with other enterprise class applications. The products have shared support for Microsoft's CLR (Common Language Runtime), meaning that SQL applications can be written in other supported programming languages such as C# and not limited to standard Query Language.

The integration strategy is also not limited to CLR. Products created with the suites will share resources across platforms for faster performance, and Visual Studio will be the front end of SQL Server 2005.

"Delivering Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 and the SQL Server 2005 April CTP to customers is a milestone because it indicates that we have entered the final stages of the development cycle for both products," said Eric Rudder, senior vice president of Servers and Tools at Microsoft.

"When we set out to develop these products, we envisioned building a solution that offered unprecedented integration between development and the database to help our customers be more productive. With these releases, we have delivered on that promise and expect to drastically change the way our customers develop and utilize their applications."

According to Microsoft, it has deployed SQL Server 2005 internally and customers including Barnes & Noble, Recall Corp. and Summit Partners have also already taken the leap to Redmond's next-generation platform. Microsoft is beginning to provide customers with learning resources on cue with the rollout.

In addition to its core SKUs, Microsoft is also providing a collaborative version of Visual Studio, called Visual Studio Team System, which is intended to improve efficiency and coordination by bringing IT decision makers, project heads and developers closer together during the development cycle.

The highly interdependent products have had waffling release dates that have called into question Microsoft's ability to deliver its "Longhorn" wave of products on time. The initial product roadmap was slated to end in 2004, but was extended into the summer of 2005 on technical grounds.

"Microsoft's 2005 product schedule is mostly about servers, with Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 and R2 acting as anchors pulling other releases. My expectation is that new Visual Studio and SQL Server versions will ship around the same time as Windows Server 2003 R2," remarked Joe Wilcox, a senior analyst with Jupiter Research.

More information and downloads for the recent releases are available to subscribers at the Microsoft Developer's Network Web site.