| DCOM Explained by Rosemary Rock-Evans Digital Press ISBN: 1555582168 Pub Date: 09/01/98

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### Visual Studio 97

Visual Studio is Microsoft’s tool suite for building DCOM and Internet applications. It was code-named Boston before its launch.

Most of the tools within the suite had been released before the final launch of the tool suite—Visual J++, for example, code-named Jakarta, had been released in August 1996. Visual C++ had of course been available for some time. But Microsoft enhanced the existing tools for the launch of Visual Studio—the main enhancements were geared towards support for ActiveX creation, integration of the development environments, and improved performance. Visual Studio was launched early 1997.

The following paragraphs describe the tools within Visual Studio in more detail.

Visual Basic 5.0-Visual Basic version 5 is an improved 32 bit version of the VB 4 development environment. Improvements made include better performance, more ease-of-use features, compilation to native code (again which improves performance), and support for the creation of ActiveX controls. After ActiveX controls have been built they can be installed in the Visual basic toolbar for reuse or placed in the Visual Component Library. Forms can be exposed as “active documents” and used with Internet Explorer.

VB’s Books Online is included together with an improved code editor (popup syntax, and help, auto complete of property and method names); new wizards; docked windows; a toolbox for customization; and tabs to organize components.

In addition to Visual Basic itself, Office 97 has standardized Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), which is like Visual Basic but cannot be used to build stand-alone applications. What the developer can do, however, is to program Word, Excel, etc. 97 objects (paragraphs, bookmarks, drawing shapes, cells, etc.) using ActiveX. These objects can raise events, and the developer can write code to respond to them. Office documents can contain ActiveX documents, and ActiveX components can be used in forms. VBA can also communicate with databases using the data access objects.

Visual C++ version 5-Version 5 of Visual C++ went into beta in January 1997 code-named Orion, with a planned release to coincide with the launch of Visual Studio. Visual C++ is Microsoft’s own primary development tool and geared towards programmers needing high performance, debugging, and access to the latest Windows APIs. Visual C++ uses Developer Studio, the same Integrated Development Environment used in Visual J++, and Visual Interdev. The environment is now “scriptable” using VB Script and exposed for automation.

The new features of Visual C++ are a better heap manager contributing to faster executables, compiler extensions to support COM, and a new version of the Microsoft Foundation Classes reflecting the inclusion of the Active Template Library. (MFC is the C++ class library that encapsulates the Windows API.)

Perhaps of greatest importance to an ActiveX developer is the inclusion of the Active Template Library. The ATL is a way of creating ActiveX controls. New wizards in Visual C++ create skeleton ATL projects making it easier to get started. By adding this enhancement, Visual C++ can now support “thin” applications (over the Internet), and support ActiveX (where before it had been limited to MS Foundation classes).

Visual J++-Visual J++ comes with Microsoft’s Java Virtual Machine and Internet Explorer 3. The Web Browser is used to debug applets. The main aim of the tool is to provide a coding and debugging tool, and as such it acts like a normal integrated programming environment. The developer can view projects as classes or files and can move through these to the source code, which can then be edited using the built-in editor. The debugger can be used to watch variables with data tips, modify variables on the fly, and view and suspend threads. The developer can also “compile” the code and see the virtual machine byte code.

Visual J++ Books Online provides Sun’s Java reference documentation, a user guide, and a tutorial. The tools come with a Java wizard to start off the Java applet or stand-alone applications and create an HTML text page. The developer can also use a visual editor to define resources, and these are converted into Java code (the tools have the same look and feel as those in Visual C++).

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