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Sci Tech
Programming tools for Web services
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The global launch today, of Microsoft's `Visual Studio.Net' provides programmers with one of the most ambitious environments ever, to tap mobile Net-enabled devices.
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This is perhaps the first development tool from a leading software maker built, bottom up, with new era of Web-enabled devices in mind.
AFTER ONE of the longest gestation periods for a new software product — almost 16 months of beta testing — Microsoft, today formally launches its most elaborate suite of programming tools, yet, for Net-based application providers.
`Visual Studio.Net' is the old slate of ``Visual'' tools: Visual Basic, Visual C++ and Visual J++ together with the new tool that builds upon C++: C# (read as `C Sharp'). The difference lies in the `DotNet' tag: all the tools have been rebuilt around XML (eXtensible Markup Language). . Indeed this is possibly the first development tool from a leading software maker to be built, bottom up, with the new era of Web-enabled devices in mind.
When Microsoft launched its Net initiative in mid 2000, it had the near future in mind, when users owning a variety of devices would expect to interoperate with each other, and with their desktop computers to exchange information in a smooth manner, without having to bother about system compatibility. A large number of Net-based service providers have. Net-enabled their sites, while over 200 million lay users have signed up for Microsoft's .Net-based `Passport' mail services. A few weeks ago, Fujitsu unveiled a `Net iPad', a handy device for retail sellers to access their company data bases, which works in the .Net environment to achieve its seamless mobility.
This week's Visual Studio.Net release, is another pit stop in Microsoft's Formula One race to capture the market in ubiquitous, on-the- move computing. The tools include editors that work with current standards for Cascading Style Sheets, HTML and XML — and the Visual J feature makes the package compatible with Java-language syntax.
This last, is a canny piece of marketing: because Microsoft's main competitor in the Web programming environment is Sun's Java. The Java answer to .Net is called Sun One ( for Open Network Environment); and positioned against Visual Studio.Net is `Forte for Java 3.0' that Sun unveiled in September 2001.
It is also worth remembering that the Microsoft vision of `anytime, anywhere' computing a la .Net, is rather similar to Hewlett Packard's `e-Speak' initiative with its own programming language called `chai'.
The Net terminology attimes misleads: example while a whole range of servers have been positioned as .Net systems, the first Net-enabled version of the SQL Server will come only early in 2003. Meanwhile, programmers have time to write fresh utilities in Visual Studio.Net or upgrade their C++ coding to allow them to run in .Net environment.
However,Web applications writers cannot afford to be nostalgic: they have to work in the environment that is expected to be the most widely used. Microsoft's domination of the desktop with Windows ensures that when computing `on the hoof' really takes off, its own standards — like .Net — will have an inevitable edge.
That said, it does seem to be a pity that even as the world is poised to take the next incremental jump in personal technology, by moving massively to a mobile environment, players like Microsoft, Sun,HP and IBM are unable to agree on a single standard for programming. But the realist will probably decide that hitching on to the Visual Studio.Net band wagon may be the best thing to do — a simple case of `better safe than sorry'.
Anand Parthasarathy
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