Visual Basic Blog
A group blog from members of the VB team
Latest posts
VB 2008 Language Deep Dive – Presentation Materials (Jonathan Aneja)
Last week I got the chance to visit the Toronto .NET User Group and give a talk on all the great new language features in VB2008. It was great to see so much excitement around LINQ and especially XML Literals! The slides and demo code are posted at the link below; here’s the session abstract (with links inserted so you can find more info on each topic): Language Integrated Query (LINQ) is a new platform feature in Visual Studio 2008 that allows you to access objects, databases, and XML through a common query syntax (in both VB and C#). In this talk, we’ll take a deep dive into the langua...
Channel 9 Interview: XML Schema Explorer in Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (Beth Massi)
Today I posted an interview on Channel 9 with Yang Xiao, a tester on the VB IDE. In this interview Yang shows us the new XML Schema Explorer in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1. This new window is invoked when you right-click on an XML literal element or namespace and select "Show in XML Schema Explorer" in Visual Basic programs. It's a nice way to visually display the structure of your schema sets which makes you even more productive when working with XML in Visual Basic. XML Schema Explorer in Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Enjoy, -Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community
VS2008 SP1 and NetFX3.5 SP1 Released (Adam Braden)
Today we shipped Service Pack 1 (SP1) for both Visual Studio 2008 and the .Net Framework 3.5. This is the first time we’ve release both a VS SP and a .NetFramework SP at the same time! Additionally, we released ENU, JPN and 8 additional languages that ship with SQL 2008 at the same time! See the announcement on Soma’s blog:http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2008/08/11/service-pack-1-for-vs-2008-and-net-fx-3-5-released.aspxHere are the links for information and where to get it: For more details on what’s included, Scott Guthrie does a great job listing all the major ...
Channel 9 Interview: SQL 2008 & Occasionally Connected Client Support in Visual Studio SP1 (Beth Massi)
I just posted a new Channel 9 interview with Milind Lele, a PM on the VS Pro Tools team. In this interview Milind shows us the improvements made to the tooling in Visual Studio SP1 for occasionally connected clients as well as the new data type support for SQL Server 2008. Using SQL 2008 built-in change tracking, you don't need to make modifications to your table schemas like you have to do with SQL 2005. Additionally he shows off a "smarter" DataSet designer where you can have tables coming from server and client data stores all contained within one model making maintenance easier.SQL 2008 & Occasionally Con...
Co- and contra-variance (Lucian Wischik)
How do I convert an IEnumerable(Of CheckingAccount) into an IEnumerable(Of Account) ? (where CheckingAccount inherits from Account).Currently this conversion isn't allowed, but we're considering a VB language feature to support it. The topic is called "co- and contravariance", and has been in the CLR since 2005 or so, but no one's yet released a .Net language that uses it. Eric Lippert has written a series of blog posts to explore how variance might appear in a hypothetical future version of C# and gather feedback, and I'm going to do the same for VB. Dim args As New List(Of ConstantExpression)args...
Channel 9 Interview: Jared Parsons on the P-Invoke Interop Assistant (Beth Massi)
Today I posted an interview screencast on Channel 9. In this interview, Jared Parsons, a Developer on the Visual Basic IDE, shows us the P/Invoke Interop Assistant available on CodePlex. The tool helps with converting unmanaged C code to managed P/Invoke signatures and vice versa. Say goodbye to digging through random header files or MSDN documentation to find the right constants, structures and signatures. The P/Invoke Interop Assistant does a smarter translation for you using SAL (Source Code Annotation Language). Enjoy,-Beth Massi, VS Community
Channel 9 Interview: Look Who's Working on Visual Basic (Beth Massi)
Last month when I was in Redmond I was pulled into a photo with some of the people working on Visual Basic. Do you notice something quirky about these pictures (besides me)? Yes, they are all wearing grey shirts! There's apparently a running joke going on with how Jonathan Aneja (top row, 4th from the left in the first picture) only wears grey. So the team all wore grey to see if he would even notice! The joke is explained in this Channel 9 interview with the VB Language Design Team. I sat down with the VB Language design team and asked them about their design process, favorite features, their thoughts on othe...
WANTED: Your feedback on a potential Call Hierarchy feature (Lisa Feigenbaum)
Last post, I introduced the VS Languages Future Focus page on Code Gallery. This time, we'd like to get your feedback on another potential IDE feature: Call Hierarchy.Please find a description of the feature here:http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/vslangfutures/Wiki/View.aspx?title=Call%20Hierarchy&referringTitle=HomePlease leave your feedback here:http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Thread/View.aspx?ProjectName=vslangfutures&ThreadId=123Thanks!LisaDISCLAIMER: It is important that readers of Future Focus topics have the right expectations. The information presented is not a binding commitment nor is it n...
WANTED: Your feedback on a potential Quick Search & Navigate feature (Lisa Feigenbaum)
We've started a new page on Code Gallery called "Future Focus", to collect your feedback on ideas that we're considering for future versions of Visual Studio.The latest post is regarding an IDE feature to help you quickly search for and navigate to symbols in your code. Please see a description of the feature here:http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/vslangfutures/Wiki/View.aspx?title=Symbol%20Search&referringTitle=HomePlease leave your feedback on this feature here:http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Thread/View.aspx?ProjectName=vslangfutures&ThreadId=520Thanks!LisaDISCLAIMER: It is important th...