At Teched 2007 in Barcelona, Spain S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Developer Division, announced that Visual Studio 2008 and .Net Framework 3.5 will be released at the end of November.
It's the first major update to Visual Studio, Microsoft's flagship integrated development environment (IDE), since 2005. Some of the key features in VS 2008 include:
- LINQ. Language Integrated Query (LINQ) is the most-anticipated new feature of Microsoft's next IDE. LINQ will make access to databases and XML faster and more efficient.
- Tools for Microsoft Office. Programming for Office 2007 will be enhanced with new tools, including tools that enhance collaboration.
- Support for multiple versions of .NET. For those with older versions of the .NET Framework, VS 2008 allows developers to build applications for .NET Framework versions going back to 2.0, without leaving the IDE.
Note that the Java-like language of J# will not be in VS 2008, as Microsoft has decided to drop support for it.