Well there has been a bit of a change at Microsoft with the focus and methodologies used to to build Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 according to the information I have received and read.  The focus was getting the product to be "Feature-Complete". Allowing for more usable and stable release.

Page 2 of the of this EWeek Article outlines some interesting comments and information about this focus. I have placed a summary below. But I recommend you read the article if you have a spare 5 minutes.

Some of the new Feature-Complete features include:

• LINQ (Language Integrated Query) support
• WPF Designer (Cider visual designer)
• Tool support for Office 2007

There is also a statement within the article that Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 is "... pretty much what you're going to see with the final version".

Each of the features within Visual Studio 2008 was allocated to a feature team which included a "handful of developers, a handful of testers and a couple of program managers".

So those teams focused on the features primarily and submitted that feature(s) when they were completed.  - Certainly makes you think whether you could be developing your software this way? Interesting.

Yellow Duck Guy
Greg Olsen.

Well if you haven't heard, Visual Studio 2008 supports Multi-targeting with .NET Frameworks 2.0, 3.0, 3.5.

• .NET Framework 2.0 - Included with Visual Studio 2005
• .NET Framework 3.0 - Included as part of Vista & Windows Server 2008 (includes .NET Framework 2.0), or as separate download
• .NET Framework 3.5 - Included with Visual Studio 2008

What does this mean for me?

Well this means you can build applications targeted for a specific framework  listed above with the one Visual Studio tool/IDE. This excludes .NET Framework 1.1 and below - sorry it looks like it was a mission to go back that far!

One thing I have noticed when opening solutions created in Visual Studio 2005 with .NET 2.0, that I was prompted when opening in VS 2008 to upgrade the solution to VS 2008.  But again you can set the target to .NET Framework 2.0.

Also if you are a .NET developer you really don't want to have multiple copies of Visual Studio on your machine (or Virtual Machine) - can't we just have one? Well you now can if you develop from .NET Framework 2.0 and above.  Its still ok to have Visual Studio 2003 and Visual Studio 2008 installed side-by-side. But once you move to .NET 2.0 you can ditch Visual Studio 2003 off your machine - unless you still need to support older applications. If you have only just begun with .NET 1.1 then I suggest you probably should upgrade to at least .NET 2.0 so you can keep moving along.

So the great advantage I see with Multi-targeting with Visual Studio 2008 is that you can move directly to Visual Studio 2008 and continue working on your .NET 2.0 applications but now with the new IDE - now that's cool!

Multi-targeting is limited though within the Express versions of Visual Studio.  I have been told that you do not get the dropdownlist of .NET Frameworks within the New Project Dialog Menu. So remember this.

Here is a snapshot of the New Project Dialog Menu showing the different targeted frameworks ......

(Image Size: 600x461)

Yellow Duck Guy
Greg Olsen

Well a few days ago I installed Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 on my home Vista (Ultimate) machine and i'm liking it!

Nice easy install, around 1.2GB after deselecting the options which I didn't need.  I must say VS 2008 seems to be a lot more stable once installed on Vista than VS 2005 on Vista so i'm pretty happy.

There is quite a few new things with Visual Studio 2008 which I couldn't possibly cover with this one post. So for now I will just show the nice install logos and post the cool stuff as I work thought it all.  Shouldn't take me to long, i.e. posting stuff within the next few days.

First lot of postings will include things like the namespaces added to every new Web page, publishing Web sites, targeting .net frameworks, new designer tools etc etc the list goes on ... stay tuned!

Original Setup Screen - not much changed here ...

Now some nice blue images captured from the install process ...

I'm liking this blue ... :-)

Yellow Duck Guy
Greg Olsen

The latest version of Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) is the Ribbon Designer.  The Ribbon Designer makes it easy to customize the Ribbon in your Office applications.  In VSTO 2005 SE, you could add a Ribbon Item to your project but most of the work was done manually via XML.

In VSTO "Orcas" (Beta 2 is the current latest version) there is a designer that lets you customize the Ribbon in the same way you'd customize a Windows Form. This means you can simply drag and drop controls from the Visual Studio toolbox onto the designer. You can then set properties of the controls, and write code in the event handler of the control. Now this is cool !

I will have to have a play with this stuff in more detail in the next few weeks.  In the mean time if you are interested then you probably should get a hold of the tools and give it a go.  I'm currently using DevExpress ( http://www.devexpress.com ) XtraBars Ribbon Control within a Windows Application at the moment but it will be good to see how they both compare.

Yellow Duck Guy
Greg Olsen

Went I went along to TechFest last night at the Town Hall in Auckland, New Zealand with a number of my colleagues from Intergen (http://www.intergen.co.nz).

The theme was Las Vegas, and the main act were Evermore.

There were other attractions throughout the night which included the Candylane Dancers and the Acrobatic Performers. 

It was good to catch up with a number of people. TechEd came to a close today @ SkyCity.

Yellow Duck Guy
Greg Olsen

• Deep integration of Language Integrated Query (LINQ) and data awareness. This new feature for the .NET Framework lets code written in LINQ-enabled languages filter, enumerate, and create projections of several types of SQL data, in memory collections, XML and DataSets using the same simple syntax.
• ASP.NET AJAX for quickly creating more efficient, more interactive and highly-personalized Web experiences that work across all the most popular browsers.
• New web protocol support for building connected systems with WCF including AJAX services with JSON encoding, REST services with POX encoding, syndication services with RSS or ATOM encoding and several new WS-* standards implementations.
•  Excellent Visual Studio 2008 support for WF, WCF and WPF including visual designers for WPF, project templates for adding WCF services and the new workflow-enabled services technology.
• New classes in the base class library (BCL) for the .NET Framework 3.5 address the most common customer requests.

• Windows Communication Foundation – A set of .NET technologies for building and running connected systems with a focus on web services.
• Windows Workflow Foundation – The programming model, engine and tools for quickly building workflow enabled applications on Windows.
• Windows Presentation Foundation – Provides the foundation for building the user interface of applications and high fidelity experiences on Windows.
• Windows CardSpace – Provides a consistent user experience required for management of users information cards that can use used for authentication.

There are 2 options for creating Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services Reports:

• Report Builder
• Report Designer

Report Builder

Microsoft hasn't forgotten the end user i.e. your Business Analyst. SQL Server is shipping with an end-user reporting tool right in the box.  Report Builder is a ClickOnce Windows Forms application that users download from the report server to their local computer.

That means that end users install it from the Web browser, but once installed it's not a browser-based application. To get started with Report Builder, browse to your Reporting Services home page.  This will have a URL something like http://YellowDuckGuyServer/Reports (or http://localhost/Reports if you're running the browser (within IIS) on the same box with SQL Server 2005 itself - sometimes common where starting out!).  Next you will need to click the Report Builder link in the home page menu bar to install and launch Report Builder.  The Report Builder will load with the New Report dialog box, showing all the available report models. I suggest you try this out if you want to get started with the Report Builder.  Your DBA will need to do a bit of setup before your end users can create their own reports.  Your end users also will need to know about their data also in order to design useful reports.

Users create reports within the Report Builder by simply dragging fields from the predefined report models onto a pre-designed report layout template. Users can format, group and sort, and filter their data. In addition, they can edit or define formulas. With Report Builder, users don't need to understand the underlying structure of the data source and they don't need to understand any complex computing languages. They simply need to be familiar with the data in their data sources.

Report Designer

Report Designer is the tool I use the most when designing reports and is focused towards your developers. You can use Report Designer within Visual Studio after installing Reporting Services on your machine or simply the Report Designer.  I'm currently using SQL Reporting Services 2005 with Visual Studio 2005.
Expression Builder within Report Designer used to create report expressions is written in VB or something close to it so your VB developers out there will love it!

So your developers (that includes me!) will use Report Designer to create more complex reports.  You have complete control over the layout, and you can add advanced features such as expressions, custom assemblies that run from the report, and report interaction for drilling down or linking to related data. You can also create basic reports that consist of simple tables, matrix, image, or lists.

In Report Designer, you can create a report in three ways.

1. You can create a blank report and build your report from scratch - I recommend this option.
2. You can use Report Wizard, which automatically creates a table or matrix report based on information you provide. This option I would not recommend if you really want to learn best practices with report building.
3. You can also import an existing report from Microsoft Access.
   

Reports are published to a report server as Report Definition Language (RDL). files as I slightly mentioned in my previous SSRS Yellow Duck Guy posting. Because a report definition is an XML document, you can create and edit reports using anything you like that can attack an XML file i.e. XML Notepad.

Under the hood, Report Designer uses the Reporting Services Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) API to publish reports to a report server.   You also have the option to upload reports using Report Manager on the report server (this could also be on your local machine).

Well now you should know the options available for building reports with SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS).

Yellow Duck Guy
Greg Olsen

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services (SSRS) will provide you very rich enterprise reporting capabilities and Web-enabled reporting functionality.

You create reports which can report off a number of different data sources (I prefer SQL Server) normally via Reporting Services "DataSet" Report Designer object. SQL Reporting Services add-in Report Designer for Visual Studio allows to you automatically deploy your reports within Visual Studio to a centalised report server. The central report server will also manage security and subscriptions (think of these as scheduled tasks) for your report(s).  The report server also allows you to upload the report (file extension of .rdl) file via the built in Report Manager.

SSRS reports can be published in different formats i.e. PDF, Excel, CSV, HTM just to name a few.

Below is an overview of where SSRS sits within the breakdown of SQL Server product from Microsoft.

More Reporting Services Information to be delivered on Yellow Duck Guy - so keep checking back for more!

Yellow Duck Guy
Greg Olsen