What's New in Visual Basic and Visual C#
Visual Basic and C# both have RAD (rapid-application development) support in Visual Studio .NET, with project templates, designers, and other features of the development environment. Both languages use the .NET Framework base classes.
In This Section
- What's New in Web Development
- Visual Basic and C# include support for Web Forms and XML Web services. Web Forms allow you to easily and quickly create the browser-based interface for ASP.NET Web applications. XML Web services allow you to package a Visual Basic or C# method and make it accessible on the Web.
- What's New in Data
- ADO.NET provides scalable, high-performance data access for all Visual Studio applications based on the .NET Framework. You can access data directly in the data source or create an in-memory cache — a dataset — for working with disconnected data. You can also work directly with XML as relational data or by creating and editing XML files directly.
- What's New in Windows Forms and Controls
- You can use Windows Forms and controls to create the presentation layer of a distributed application. Windows Forms provides a clear, object-oriented, extensible set of classes that enable you to develop rich Windows applications.
- What's New in Projects
- You can use the Project templates in this version to easily create various types of Windows and ASP.NET Web applications and controls. Project templates set necessary references for you, import namespaces, and add default items to your projects.
- What's New in Components and Component Authoring
- You can use nonvisual components and associated features to incorporate resources such as message queues, event logs, and performance counters into your applications. This version also offers RAD support for component creation via the Component Designer and framework classes that help you create controls and components.
- What's New in Debugging
- You can now debug projects that are part of the same solution but written in different languages, perform remote debugging, and implement trace functionality throughout your code to retrieve finely tuned output.
- What's New in Extensibility and Automation
- Visual Studio .NET includes a programmable object model that provides access to the underlying components and events of the integrated development environment (IDE). This model allows you to extend the functionality of the IDE, automate repetitive tasks, and integrate the IDE with other applications.
- What's New in International Applications
- Internationalization features in Visual Basic .NET make it easy to create applications targeting multiple locales, building on the globalization and localization features of the .NET Framework.
- What's New in Upgrading
- Visual Basic .NET 2003 now includes support for upgrading Visual Basic 6.0 WebClass and UserControl projects, plus a new tool for upgrading blocks of Visual Basic 6.0 code. Visual Studio .NET 2003 also includes the Java Language Conversion Assistant, which you can use to convert your Visual J++ 6.0 and Java-language projects to Visual C# .NET.
- What's New in the Visual Basic Language
- Visual Basic .NET, the next generation of the Visual Basic language, is designed to be a fast and easy way to create .NET applications, including XML Web services and ASP.NET Web applications.
Visual Basic .NET has many new and improved features such as inheritance, interfaces, and overloading that make it a powerful object-oriented programming language. Other new language features include free threading and structured exception handling. Visual Basic .NET fully integrates the .NET Framework and the Common Language Runtime, which together provide language interoperability, garbage collection, enhanced security, and improved versioning support.
- Visual C# Language
- Visual C# (pronounced C sharp) is a new programming language introduced in Visual Studio .NET. An evolution of C and C++, C# is simple, modern, type-safe, and object-oriented. It was designed for building a wide range of enterprise applications that run on the .NET Platform. Code that you write with Visual C# is compiled as managed code, which means it benefits from the services of the Common Language Runtime. These services include language interoperability, garbage collection, enhanced security, and improved versioning support.
Visual C# is fully supported within Visual Studio .NET by project templates, designers, property pages, code assistants, an object model, and other features of the development environment. The library for Visual C# programming is the .NET Framework.
- What's New in Visual C# .NET 2003
- Discusses the programmatic improvements in Visual C#, including enhancements to IntelliSense and the development environment.
- What's New in Visual Studio .NET
- Summarizes new features in the shared Visual Studio IDE used by Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++, XML Web services, XML support, sample applications, and Help.
- What's New in Deployment
- Describes the new deployment features of Visual Studio .NET. Using the new deployment features you can distribute applications using Microsoft Windows Installer technology, deploy to production and staging servers, deploy tiers of your application to different test computers, and deploy ASP.NET Web applications to Web servers.
- Inside the .NET Framework
- Describes features of the .NET Framework, including the common language runtime, managed versus unmanaged execution, the common type system, and the .NET Framework class library.
- What's New in Visual Studio Analyzer?
- Describes the features of Visual Studio Analyzer, which analyzes the performance of distributed applications and performs debugging.
- What's New in Visual Database Tools
- Describes the Visual Database Tools, including the Database Designer, the SQL Editor, and Server Explorer. You can use these tools to help create and manage data-driven applications.
- Introducing Visual J#
- Provides an overview of the capabilities, features, and architecture of the Visual J# development system.