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DevDays Ushers the Release of Visual Studio 6.0

KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa. -- For developers in 33 locations worldwide attending Microsoft Developers Days on Wednesday, Microsoft Corp. and local partners presented features and functions of the new Visual Studio 6.0, which includes Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual InterDev, Visual J++ and Visual FoxPro.

In his keynote address delivered via satellite, Bill Gates described today’s computing infrastructure as the Digital Nervous System (DNS) and explained that Microsoft’s role is to deliver software for this DNS. In demonstrating Visual Studio capabilities, Gates said that the new development suite is key to building this system.

After the keynote, regional directors at each of the Developer Days locations fleshed out the multitier aspects of Visual Studio, including features common to all components of the enterprise edition of Visual Studio, such as IntelliSense, ADO 2.0, Visual database tools and support for OLE DB.

In three 1 ½-hour technical sessions, attendees received in-depth information about specific tools in the suite via demonstrations of each of the components.

The day wasn't as exciting in King of Prussia as it was in Santa Clara, Calif. where Oracle Corp. gave out millions of dollars of its development software free to those attending the Microsoft DevDay convention at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Representatives from Oracle handed out CDs containing the Oracle jDeveloper 1.1 Java-based application development product, which retails for $2,995, free to the thousands of attendees. The display was in reaction to what Oracle feels is Microsoft's attempt to convert the Web into Windows. – Roseann McGrath Brooks, Managing Editor

About the Author

Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.