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What's New for Visual F# in Visual Studio 2012

Visual F# in Visual Studio 2012 features F# 3.0, which extends the succinct and expressive F# language to support F# information-rich programming. This technology lets you program directly against rich spaces of data and services that often dominate enterprise and web programming today, such as databases, web services, web data feeds and data brokers.

F# information-rich programming is code-focused and can be used in both scripts and projects. It also allows you to specify OData and SQL Server database connections directly in your code, while giving strong types with IntelliSense assistance. The mechanism is extensible, allowing you to write or reference new providers for data, code and service technologies such as SharePoint, web ontologies, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), XML and other information sources. F# information-rich programming includes the F# Type Providers mechanism, F# LINQ Queries, and a set of built-in type providers for database, OData, and web service programming.

Visual F# in Visual Studio 2012 also includes many enhancements to the code editor designed to improve productivity when writing F# code.

What's New in the F# Language and Compiler

The following new features are available in F# 3.0:

  1. Type Providers. Type Providers generate types based on structured data. They make it easier to access diverse sources of data. Type providers for several commonly used data sources are included in the F# library. For general information on type providers, see Type Providers. These include:

    Additionally, you can author your own type providers. For more information see, Tutorial: Creating a Type Provider (F#).

  2. Query Expressions. This feature implements LINQ for F#. You can now write queries in a SQL-like syntax in the F# language. For more information, see Query Expressions (F#).

  3. Auto-implemented properties. You can now declare properties without also declaring a backing store for the property. For more information, see Properties (F#).

What's New in the Development Environment

This version of Visual F# contains the following enhancements in the editor and integrated development environment (IDE):

  • Parameter Help. When typing a function or method call, information on each parameter now appears as you type.

  • Enhanced IntelliSense. These features provide helpful information in tooltips as you write code in F#.

What's New in the F# Library

The following new features are included in this version of the F# Core Library:

Targeted Frameworks and Platforms

By using this version of Visual F#, you can create applications that run against the following versions of the .NET Framework: 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, 4, and 4.5. You can also target an app for Silverlight 5, and you can create libraries and components that work with Windows Store apps by using the F# Portable Library project template.

Warning

You can upgrade most F# projects to Visual Studio 2012 when you first open them in that version. However, you can't upgrade a Silverlight project from an older version of Visual Studio to Visual Studio 2012. Instead, you create a Silverlight project in Visual Studio 2012 and then copy your code into the new project. Silverlight projects that you create by using Visual Studio 2012 target Silverlight 5.

Minor Changes

In addition, you might want to be aware of the following minor changes:

  1. Triple-quoted strings. These strings can contain single-quote characters. For more information, see Strings (F#).

See Also

Concepts

What's New in Visual Studio 2012

Breaking Changes in F# 3.0

Other Resources

Visual F# 2010