Microsoft unveils Visual Studio 97

Microsoft official unveiled the Visual Studio 97 suite, a multiple-languageprogramming package that combines all of their Internet and applicationsdevelopment tools. The package was formerly known as "Boston." The components of Visual Studio 97 include: • Visual Basic 5.0 • Visual InterDev • Visual C++ 5.0 • Visual J++ 1.1 • Visual FoxPro 5.0 • MSDN documentationVisual Studio 97 will be available on March 19th, when Microsoft kicks offtheir biggest-ever Developer Days conference. There will be Professional and Enterprise Editions of the package, though pricing has not yet beendetermined. In its first iteration, the product offers minimal cross-toolintegration, much like the first Microsoft Office suite. Visual Basic andVisual FoxPro still sport separate, non-integrated IDEs, for example, whileVisual J++, Visual C++, MSDN, and Visual InterDev share the DeveloperStudio IDE. Microsoft intends to bring the products closer together for the next release. For now, the biggest incentive to buy the whole package is price.Visual Studio 97 is targeted at professional developers, not the casualprogramming crowd, who will still be able to buy each of the componentsseparately