The March CTP release of ORCAS (Visual Studio 2008) incorporates a number of new and exciting technologies, as well as enhancing some of the older greats. The current release of the IDE implements tools and functionality supporting LINQ (Microsoft’s .NET Extensions, Language Integration Query), AJAX, Windows Presentation Foundation (codenamed CIDER), Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation and the .NET framework 3.5 (downloaded separately). According to Microsoft the latest framework will support applications built in .NET 2.0 and 3.0. Further to this raft of newly integrated features, it also extends role-based and Team System collaboration features.
Traditionally, Microsoft offers a Go Live license at beta 2, and that will almost certainly be the case here. Microsoft have saturated the market with new capabilities, and many of these platforms and technologies represent the culmination of years of work.
More on LINQ and ORCAS in coming posts…
