Introducing Visual Studio .NET 2003

So far in the book you haven't used a visual tool or an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to develop your applications. This is quite a significant change from earlier versions of Microsoft platforms, in which Visual Studio was required to develop applications. Even the command-line compilers were part of the Visual Studio environment. In .NET, Visual Studio is not a requirement. Applications (Web based or non-Web based) or even Web services can all be developed without using any Visual Studio toolset. The .NET Framework SDK is the minimum required to develop .NET applications. However, management of the various source code, building scripts, and so on is left to the developer.

Visual Studio .NET is focused on enhancing a developer's productivity by providing an integrated developer environment to build, test, and deploy .NET components and applications. The tool internally utilizes .NET Framework SDK. Actually, a major part of the Visual Studio .NET application itself has been developed using the .NET Framework.

Visual Studio .NET Versions

Two releases of Visual Studio .NET have been released so far. The first, Visual Studio .NET 2002, was released with version 1.0 of .NET Framework/SDK. Visual Studio .NET 2003, the current, generally available version, is the second release of the Visual Studio .NET environment and uses version 1.1 of the .NET Framework/SDK. In the rest of the chapter, Visual Studio .NET refers to the Visual Studio .NET 2003 version, unless specified.

Visual Studio .NET Editions

Visual Studio .NET is available in three editions: Professional, Enterprise Developer, and Enterprise Architect. Professional Edition includes pretty much everything needed for a basic development tool, such as development support for XML/Web services, Web applications and controls, Windows applications, class libraries, Windows services, and so on. All four Microsoft-supported languages (Visual C#, Visual C++, Visual Basic .NET, and Visual J#) are included as well. Enterprise Developer adds Visual SourceSafe for team development, support for test automation for Application Center, a set of enterprise frameworks and templates, .NET-connected reference applications, Visual Studio Analyzer, and development copies of Windows Server, SQL Server, Exchange Server, Host Integration Server, Commerce Server, and so on. Enterprise Architect (which is the version used in the writing of this book) also includes Visio-based application and database modeling, BizTalk Server, and provides enterprise template project type. In addition to the three commercial editions, an academic edition is available for classroom use.

If you need more details regarding a particular edition of Visual Studio .NET, visit the following URL: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/howtobuy/choosing.aspx.

System Requirements

Visual Studio .NET 2003 supports a number of operating systems, including Windows Server 2003, Windows XP Professional (Home with some limited capabilities) or Windows 2000 Professional/Server/Advanced Server (with SP3+). If you would like to install Visual Studio .NET, keep lots of free disk space (about 1GB free; 3GB if you plan to install the whole MSDN Library/Documentation) and enough memory (256512MB RAM).

WHAT'S NEW IN VISUAL STUDIO .NET 2003?

Visual Studio .NET 2003 enhances the initial set of features of Visual Studio .NET 2002 for .NET application development. Key highlights include integrated .NET Framework 1.1 support, integrated Mobile Application Development for Smart devices (Pocket PC, Pocket PC Phone Edition, and so on) using .NET Compact Framework, Integrated Wireless Application delivery for devices with microbrowsers (WAP phones, PDAs, and pagers ), and a number of enhancements to Visual C++, including extended ISO conformance and new compiler optimizations for Pentium IV and AMD Athlon processors.

Further details on system requirements can be previewed at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/productinfo/sysreqs/default.aspx.

Installing Visual Studio .NET

If you plan to develop Web applications using Visual Studio .NET, you should first install Internet Information Server (IIS). Note that IIS doesn't have to be installed on the local machine if you are always going to be developing on a separate development server. If you are installing Visual Studio .NET on Windows 2003 Server (similar to the configuration I have), IIS 6.0 can be easily installed and configured by enabling the Application Server role using the Configure Your Server Wizard shown in Figure 5.1. Be sure to enable FrontPage extensions because Visual Studio .NET requires them to develop remote Web applications.

Figure 5.1. Application Server Role in Windows 2003.

Although it is not required, installation of a developer edition of SQL Server 2000 (with the appropriate service pack/patches) would be very helpful in building database-centric applications or testing sample applications with database connectivity.

Installation of Visual Studio .NET 2003 involves several steps, which are facilitated by the installation wizard.

1. Install Windows Prerequisites. Depending on the platform that you are installing, Visual Studio .NET Installer will install and configure a number of platform upgrades, such as the .NET Framework. In my case, because I was using Windows 2003, only Visual J# .NET Redistributable Package 1.1 was required. If you use any other older (yet supported) version of the operating system/configuration, you may be required to install other prerequisites (see Figure 5.2).

   Figure 5.2. The Visual Studio .NET installer.

   

2. Install Visual Studio .NET. This step enables you to pick and choose which components of Visual Studio .NET to install (as shown in Figure 5.3), including languages, mobile application development environment, and the like. About 1,500MB of disk space is required for a complete installation. You probably will want to sit back and relax because the installation processes take quite a while.

   Figure 5.3. Installation options.

   

3. Install Product Documentation (MSDN Library), which contains documentation, code samples, and so on for Visual Studio .NET. For MSDN Library, you can choose to install either a minimum version that contains the index of the help files or the full library itself. I would highly recommend installing the complete library on a developer workstation because it is much faster to access, and you won't have to worry about having the MSDN Library CDs/DVD in your CD/DVD drives . However, you need about 2GB of extra disk space to install the full MSDN Library on your computer.

4. Update Visual Studio .NET. The installer includes an automatic utility that updates the Visual Studio .NET installation with any updates and patches. (This utility can also be executed separately within the IDE by clicking Help, Check for Updates.)

Keyboard Shortcuts

You will also find it useful to get familiar with various timesaving keyboard shortcuts, as shown in Table 5.1:

Table 5.1. Visual Studio .NET 2003 Keyboard Shortcuts

QUICK TASK	KEYBOARD SHORTCUT
New Project	Ctrl+Shift+N
New File	Ctrl+N
Add New Item	Ctrl+Shift+A
Save All	Ctrl+Shift+S
Save	Ctrl+S
Find	Ctrl+F
Replace	Ctrl+H
View Properties Window	F4
Full Screen	Ctrl+Shift+Enter
Build Solution	Ctrl+Shift+B
Dynamic Help	Ctrl+F1
Context-Sensitive Help	F1
Start Debugging/Execution	F5
Start Without Debugging	Ctrl+F5
Debugging Step Into	F11
Debugging Step Over	F10
New Breakpoint	Ctrl+B
Breakpoints Window	Ctrl+Alt+B

SHOP TALK : ARE IDEs ALWAYS USEFUL?

In my experience, IDEs such as Visual Studio .NET are always useful. Of course, some practice and training is always essential to use IDE capabilities. However, a number of experienced developers use IDE capabilities not for the visual design time elements (such as Web Form designer) but more for the integrated set of core capabilities such as project and file management, source code control, build and debugging. Actually, you should kick start your .NET development with the core SDK and gradually move toward the core IDE features such as project and file management and building your code. However, use the visual design time elements only after you are quite comfortable with the IDE and the overall platform and its class library in general. The general rule is to always clearly know what the IDE is visually generating for you.