I so can’t wait for these two products to ship!

Microsoft** revealed the official names Monday of the next major upgrades to its Visual Studio software development tools platform and its SQL Server database, which will be called, simply, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008.

The company announced these names during the Microsoft TechEd 2007 conference in Orlando, Fla., which began on Monday. The Visual Studio upgrade had been codenamed “Orcas,” while SQL Server has had the “Katmai” code name.

Visual Studio 2008 is due for general release at the end of 2007, said Steve Guggenheimer, general manager of the applications platform at Microsoft. A second beta release of the product is due later this summer, featuring Visual Studio Shell, which enables developers to build and distribute custom tools built on the Visual Studio IDE. A first beta was released on April 26.

The Visual Studio upgrade focuses on development of Web-based applications as well as on Windows and Microsoft’s Office suite, Guggenheimer said. “This release is very much oriented toward supporting the Vista and Office release as well as the Longhorn Server release,” of Windows, said Guggenheimer. The company announced in May that Longhorn will be called Windows Server 2008; it, too, is due later this year.

Even though it will ship in 2007, the Visual Studio upgrade will bear 2008 in its nameplate because that is when Microsoft expects most people will buy it, Guggenheimer said.

SQL Server 2008, meanwhile, will ship around the middle of 2008; a first Community Technology Preview was made available at TechEd, accessible here. The new database will offer improvements for enterprise scalability and business intelligence, including reporting technology from Dundas Data Visualization. Microsoft announced its acquisition of Dundas products on Monday morning.

Source

InfoWorld

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