Info on Whidbey and Beyond

Microsoft posted some great info about upcoming releases of the .NET Framework and VS.NET. Some of the questions that the article raises for me:

  • The Visual Basic topic mentions Edit and Continue. Will this feature be in C# as well? God, I hope so.
  • The Visual C# sections mentions stuff like generics, iterators, and anonymous methods. Available in VB.NET (et al) as well? Since it has to happen at the CLR level, I'm assuming so, but it isn't mentioned.
  • Web Services - what's the continuing role of ASMX vs WSE?

Some of the interesting highlights for me include:

  • Improved no-touch deployment. Sweet. Save us from the limitations of the browser-based UI.
  • Better Windows Forms controls. Much needed. Save us from the limitations of Windows Forms 1.x.
  • The DataSource stuff sounds interesting but vague
  • Tracing and XQuery in ADO.NET
Other comments:
  • Interesting (and a little disturbing) that they've come up with completely new grid controls, both on Windows Forms and ASP.NET. Was it impossible to evolve the existing controls?
  • Have they fleshed out the platform-independent database interfaces in this release?
  • Will they finally fix WSDL.EXE to generate proxy classes with properties instead of fields?
 
 

 

7 Comments

  • WSE is a logical part of the framework, and is just an extension to ASMX handlers to add specifics like WS-Security and so on. They are complementary, not competing.



    Generics / edit-and-continue features were mentioned again today at the VSLive! keynote. They sure branded them as language specific, though I would hope they're not. It might be a way for the "language divergence" so that certain languages can add specific value-add in certain realms - though I personally hope this isn't the case.

  • FWIW, generics are mentioned in the VB section, using nearly the exact same language as the C# section uses (minus the references to C++ differences and similarities).



    "In addition, developers using Visual Basic will have access to a type-safe, high-performance, compile time-verified version of generics that promote code reuse across a variety of data types."



  • Oops. Must have skimmed over that generics comment in the VB.NET section. Thanks.

  • The way I read the VB part is that you can consume generics, but not create them. Of course, I could be extremely wrong here.

  • That's what I thought at first, but, as I said before, the language is pretty much identical in the C# section. Besides, generics that you can consume but not create are pretty nearly useless.

  • We're under NDA for most details on language stuff for now, but I will say, starting over on the grid controls was a great decision, IMHO...they totally rock and help towards no compatibility issues! :D

  • I second that, DC! (Aren't we also not allowed to say we're even under NDA? ;)).



    About Edit/Continue: isn't that already available for C# in vs2003?



    About 'new' winforms controls: there are new controls. I haven't checked if the set of controls also available in the current vs2003 crop is still build using Win32 controls and SendMessage(), which I hope not.

Comments have been disabled for this content.