email article printer friendly

Modeling a New Version of VS
Read Part 2 of this exclusive interview with Microsoft's S. "Soma" Somasegar on the launch of Visual Studio 2005.

November 8, 2005

S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft, talks to VSM Editor in Chief Patrick Meader about the imminent release of Visual Studio 2005. This installment covers messaging and the significance of Visual Studio Team System, including the importance of domain-specific languages for modeling. Read Part 1 here.

S. "Soma" Somasegar Corporate Vice President, Developer Division, Microsoft

PM: Tell me what's new in Visual Studio 2005 from a messaging standpoint. How do these new features tie into Microsoft's larger messaging strategy, such as what's coming down the road in Windows Communication Foundation (formerly known as Indigo)?

Soma: There are two things at play, here: the messaging features specific to Visual Studio 2005, and how Indigo will impact messaging down the road.

Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, and BizTalk Server 2006 together comprise our application platform. From my conversations with developers, I believe they want three things. First, they want an infrastructure suitable for running mission-critical applications. Second, they want a programming environment that will make them highly productive. Third, they want data insight for any data they have in their organization. In other words, they want intelligence in their data. They want to be able to understand the data, to manipulate it, and to use the insight gleaned from that data to make better business decisions.

Now let's look at this question from the perspective of Indigo. In Visual Studio 2005, you can write a Vista application that will run on BizTalk seamlessly. We've put out some templates and an SDK that makes it easy for you to target Indigo and Avalon and other Vista-related technologies. For the next version of Visual Studio, we intend to create some app designers that will greatly simplify creating applications that take specific advantage of Vista-related technologies across the board, but with a special emphasis on Indigo and Avalon.

Today, you can use Visual Studio 2005 to build these kinds of applications now, but this process will get much easier over time.

PM: Will these designers be timed to the release of Visual Studio, or to the release of Vista?

Soma: It's too soon to say that at this time, but we'll be certain to share this information with the community at large as our strategy sharpens into focus.

Implications of VSTS
PM: Visual Studio Team System is extremely ambitious. Can you sum up what VSTS is and how it can benefit the typical enterprise developer?

Soma: There is a workflow that happens when a team of people work together. You want to be able to automate that workflow, as well as know where you are in that workflow at any given time. This means you need to understand the entire picture, so you know where you need to put your efforts to get things done in a timely manner.

VSTS enables you to implement workflow automation and be able to understand where you are in a given project at any time, all the way from design to deployment. In other words, you want to design for operations; you want to architect, develop, and test your application; and it is a closed loop because you want to continue updating your application. A set of tools that enables that whole process to be automated is what VSTS is all about.

PM: You didn't touch on the modeling aspects specifically in this description.

Soma: I glossed over that part when I referred to designing or architecting your application. The modeling, or Whitehorse, tools enter at this level. There are two advantages to VSTS's modeling tools. First, if you have a model, you can think about the hardware requirements for your app, and you can determine at design time whether your app can be deployed as envisioned, rather than doing so at deployment. VSTS lets you determine as you go whether you deploy the app on existing hardware, or whether you need to make infrastructure adjustments. The second big advantage is that VSTS has a model, and code behind that model. Anytime you touch the code, the model is synchronized. That is a huge advantage. This means you can ensure that the code and your model stay in sync throughout the development process.