Issue: 2003 - Vol. 1 - Issue 3 - Whidbey and Yukon PDC Special

Rod Paddock portrays the Whidbey and Yukon previews as exciting new software development “toys” that expand and energize the developer landscape. He shares his enthusiasm for features like integrating .NET into Yukon’s triggers and stored procedures, creating new data types, and Whidbey’s edit-and-continue, along with numerous ASP.NET, Windows Forms, and language updates. Paddock invites readers to explore these advances and reads the accompanying expert articles, unders...coring a playful yet serious anticipation for the next generation of Visual Studio, .NET Framework, and SQL Server.See More

Yair Alan Griver surveys the upcoming Visual Studio .NET Whidbey, outlining a broad set of enhancements across languages, the .NET Framework, and the development environment. He emphasizes continued cross-language interoperability, new language features (generics, partial types, iterators, anonymous methods, and more across VB, C#, C++, and J#), framework improvements (Windows and Web client capabilities, device support, data access, and Web services), and a strengthened... IDE with extensibility, debugging visualizations, MSBuild integration, and task-focused productivity tools. Griver aims to give a focused roadmap of Whidbey’s ambitious, productivity-driven changes.See More

Catering to the strength of the third-party .NET component market and the power of the .NET Framework itself, Microsoft includes several powerful new WinForm controls in the Base Class Libraries for Windows application development.The WinForm controls provided by the .NET Framework 1.1 are extremely useful, and the framework for developing new custom controls provided in 1.1 is very strong, but sometimes the development community expects more out-of-the box. Many needs o...f the development community are satisfied by the basic collection of WinForm controls while some developers have voiced their need for more functionality. Microsoft appears ready to rise to the occasion with the inclusion of many new WinForm controls.See More

As the core API set underpinning managed application development in .NET, the Base Class Libraries, receive several long-awaited and notable additions in the Whidbey release.The Base Class Libraries (BCL) provide a standardized set of managed APIs to accomplish all of the common and most widely executed application tasks. BCL enhancements surface in as performance-based improvements, class-oriented feature additions, and the introduction of previously missing functionali...ty through entirely new classes.See More

The next version of SQL Server (code name Yukon) has extensive support of the Common Language Runtime (CLR).Previous versions of SQL Server (2000 and earlier) had a mechanism for creating custom data types. These data types were nothing more than aliases to system data types. In Yukon, you can create your own fully functional custom data types.

ASP.NET Whidbey adds a huge number of productivity features and enhancements.Although it's still early in the development process, Paul and Ken dig in and start playing with some of the new features, passing along what they've found.

C# has always had a reputation as a clean language with lots of innovation.The Whidbey-release of Visual Studio .NET ships with a new version of the C# compiler that has a number of great new features. Some of them will be implemented as generic runtime features that will show up in other languages as well, and some are truly C#-specific. All of them originated in the C# camp. In this article, I will shed some light on my three favorite new features.