New features of Visual Studio.NET 2008 and JDeveloper 11g

Introduction

In this article, I want to explain the new features of Visual Studio.NET 2008 and JDeveloper 11g which are the IDE provided by Microsoft and Oracle for the development of enterprise application for .NET and Java platform.

New features in Visual Studio.NET 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5

1. LINQ Support. LINQ is new feature that adds native data querying capabilities to .NET languages. LINQ defines a set of proprietary query operators that can be used to query, project and filter data in arrays, enumerable classes, XML (XLINQ), relational database, and third party data sources. Queries written using the query operators are executed either by the LINQ query processing engine or, via an extension mechanism, handed over to LINQ providers which either implement a separate query processing engine or translate to a different format to be executed on a separate data store.
   
   As well VS 2008 has design support for LINQ-to-SQL. You have directly database explorer, so that you can create connections and define the matching from your object model to your data model.
   
2. Expression Blend Support. Expression blend is XAML generator tool for silverlight applications. You can install Expression blend as an embedded plug-in to Visual Studio 2008. By this you can get extensive web designer and JavaScript tool.
    
3. Windows Presentation Foundation. Windows Presentation Foundation which is is a graphical subsystem for rendering user interfaces in Windows-based applications. WPF provides a consistent programming model for building applications and provides a clear separation between the user interface and the business logic. Visual Studio 2008 contains plenty of WPF Windows Presentation Foundation Library templates. By this a visual developer who is new to .NET, C# and VB.NET can easily develop the 2D and 3D graphic applications. Visual Studio 2008 also provides free game development library kits for games developers. currently this game development kits are available for C++ and also 2D/3D Dark Matter one image and sounds sets.
    
4. VS 2008 Multi-Targeting Support
   
   Earlier you were not able to working with .NET 1.1 applications directly in visual studio 2005. Now in Visual studio 2008 you are able to create, run, debug the .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0 and .NET 3.5 applications. You can also deploy .NET 2.0 applications in the machines which contains only .NET 2.0 not .NET 3.x.
    
5. Built-in AJAX support
   
   Before VS 2008 you have to install AJAX control library separately, but now if you install Visual Studio 2008, you can built-in AJAX control library. This Ajax Library contains plenty of rich AJAX controls like Menu, TreeView, webparts and also these components support JSON and VS 2008 contains in built ASP.NET AJAX Control Extenders.
    
6. JavaScript Debugging Support. Because debugging an error in JavaScript is very difficult, now Visual Studio 2008 makes it is simpler with a javascript debugger.
    
7. Organize Imports or Usings.Visual Studio contains Organize Imports feature which removes unnecessary namespaces which you have imported. You can select all the namespaces and right click on it, then you can get context menu with Organize imports options like "Remove Unused Usings", "Sort Usings", "Remove and Sort". This is a nice feature to support refactoring.
    
8. Transparency in Intellisense drop-down list. When you press the period after some object name, and the intellisense drop-down list appears, then you can hold the Ctrl key to become the intellisense semi-transparent.
    
9. HTML JavaScript warnings, not as errors. VS 2005 mixes HTML errors and C# and VB.NET errors and shows in one window. Now VS 2008 separates this and shows javascript and HTML errors as warnings. But this is configurable feature.
    
10. Debugging .NET Framework Library Source Code. Now in VS 2008 you can debug the source code of .NET Framework Library methods.
     
11. Built-in Silverlight support
    
    Previously developer has to install Silverlight SDK separately, and now this is included in the installation of Visual Studio 2008.
     
12. Enhancement to Web designer and CSS support
    
    There is a significant enhancement in the HTML designer to support split-view editing, nested master pages and integration with CSS.

New features in JDeveloper 11g

1. Last change indicator in the code editor. Now a marker in the left side of the code editor provides a quick visual indication of changes on the current file. You can hover the marker for further details.
    
2. New option on the Run menu to run the currently selected working set.
    
3. In the Java code editor, you can find several dialogs to enable the creation of Enums, quick navigation to any child node, to work with subversion systems displaying SVN file/folder information such as revision info and properties, and to manage collaboration and versioning through JDeveloper.
    
4. In the debugging and profiling field, we can find the class window to display the loaded classes names and instances count, to walk through objects, to display the return value of function and to allow the user to specify a list of methods whose runnable time is to be counted as I/O time to allow the user to distinguish thread blocks on files or socket read/write from real CPU.
    
5. In the database development area, you can find new features to query offline database using SQL statements, to generate Oracle MetaBase scripts for Oracle Warehouse Builder, to emulate and generate SQL for Microsoft SQL Server 2005
    
6. In the UML area, JDeveloper 11g supports UML2 notation and meta model properties for the Class, Sequence and Use Case diagrammer.
    
7. JDeveloper 11g now supports Ajax and JavaScript programming. You can embed JavaScript inside JSF fragments. You can also select a block of code in JavaScript and do some refactoring in order to extract it into a separate file.
    
8. In the data access layer's components, now JDeveloper supports JAXB content model and schema generation to enable the user to choose either EclipseLink or TopLink as the persistent provider. Now JDeveloper supports stored procedure in TopLink ORM to enable a stored procedure as the main artifact to select criteria on queries. And finally, the active data technique to maintain an open connection to the server and pushing data to the clients whenever the data is changed on the server.
    
9. ADF Desktop integration brings the power of ADF data binding to Microsoft Excel.
    
10. In the ADF Faces area, you can find several new components such as af:calendar, af:panelDashboard, af:popup, af:panelAccordion and af:panelTabbed.

Conclusion

In this article, I've explained the main features of the latest release of Visual Studio.NET 2008 and JDeveloper 11g.