From the March 2002 issue of MSDN Magazine

  • Article

MSDN Magazine

Resources for Your Developer Toolbox
Theresa W. Carey
In this special edition of New Stuff, we bring you a list of programming language resources for your Visual Studio® projects. Third-party tools are normally the focus of this column, but when it comes to languages for Microsoft® .NET development, we have to make note of some of the offerings from Microsoft, and give you a taste of how they fit together.

Microsoft .NET

Microsoft .NET       Visual Basic® .NET provides tools to build apps that integrate with most any database. Setting just two properties connects the control to just about any data source including SQL Server™ 6.5 and later, Oracle 7.3.3+ or above, and AS/400 databases. The Data Environment designer allows developers to drag and drop custom data-bound controls to create custom data hierarchies, forms, or reports with the new Data Report designer. In addition, you can debug Microsoft Transaction Services-packaged components, and deploy them to remote servers.
      Visual J#™ .NET (Beta 1) is a tool for Java-language developers who want to build applications and services on the .NET Framework. All the features of the Visual Studio .NET IDE are accessible to the developer using Visual J#. Visual J# .NET is designed to take advantage of ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Windows® Forms, and XML Web Services, as well as full cross-language integration. The package includes tools to upgrade and convert existing Visual J++® 6.0 projects and solutions to the new Visual Studio .NET format.

COBOL for .NET

      Fujitsu has updated COBOL 6.1 by integrating the language into the Visual Studio .NET environment. For developers who primarily use other languages, integrating legacy COBOL code is now easier. Features include the ability to call COBOL COM objects from ASP and from apps using Visual Basic, the ability to call Java classes from COBOL, and a Web Application Wizard.
      Fujitsu also supports the .NET platform with Lahey/Fujitsu Fortran 5.6, published by its partner, Lahey Computer Systems. Fortran will now have access to the latest in XML Web Services technology and application development frameworks such as ASP.NET.

Perl and XSLT

      Perl, Python, and XSLT developers can utilize ActiveState's plug-ins, Visual Perl, Visual Python, and Visual XSLT, to bring those languages to the .NET Framework. Visual Perl includes the Perl Editor, a graphical debugger, the Rx Toolkit, a code browser, source code control, and dynamic help. The plug-in is integrated with ActiveState's Perl Dev Kit and a Project Manager that organizes your Perl files and other files for quick access from your entire project. Visual Python includes the Python Editor with IntelliSense®, a graphical debugger, a project manager, a class browser, and source code control. Visual XSLT also has a debugger, which lets you choose from the .NET Framework System.Xsl namespace or the open source Xalan XSLT engines, and provides XPath expression evaluation.

Pascal for .NET

TMT       Programming in Pascal? The TMT Development Corporation's Pascal compiler for .NET produces managed Pascal code for the .NET Framework. It can accept programs in standard Pascal (except for some unsafe features, such as records with variants, which are allowed if variants aren't overlapped). This compiler contains object-oriented extensions of main features compatible with Delphi and accepts many language extensions from Borland Pascal/Delphi. TMT Pascal supports interoperability with other .NET Framework components. It can import any module conforming to the Common Language Specification (CLS) and produce any specification which fits into the CLS. The compiler contains many libraries for backward compatibility. TMT's Multi-Target Pascal Compiler follows the ANSI/ISO Pascal standard and has many powerful object-oriented extensions. It produces native 32-bit applications optimized for Windows 9x , Windows NT®, and Windows 2000 platforms.

APL for .NET

      Dyadic is pleased to announce Dyalog APL/W Version 9 for Windows, which has a completely new IDE that employs dockable windows and a multiple document interface editor. The company plans to release Dyalog.net (currently in beta), which will be integrated into the .NET environment. In Version 9, namespaces became first-class objects, and there's much improved COM support, which takes full advantage of namespace references. Properties of GUI objects may now be assigned and referenced directly, as if they were variables, and methods (and events) may be invoked as if they were functions.

Smalltalk for .NET

QKS       SmallScript, published by Quasar Knowledge Systems (QKS), is a multiparadigm language superset of Smalltalk, which enables modular deployment. The SmallScript compiler was extended to support the generation of native Microsoft .NET Framework modules and assemblies. Key features of the AOS Platform's dynamic language facilities were also extracted and ported to .NET. The extended SmallScript for the .NET-targeted compiler enables the creation of true Microsoft .NET code. Since the SmallScript language includes a linguistic superset of Smalltalk, its compilers can process existing Smalltalk code. Additional secondary languages that are supported include Python, PHP, Basic, JScript®, Scheme, C++, C, and Assembler.

Eiffel

ISE       Interactive Software Engineering, Inc. (ISE) has released Eiffel Studio 5.1, which provides full support for the .NET environment. It includes the .NET Wizard and the ISE Assembly Manager, which help you migrate existing projects to .NET. The .NET Wizard automatically generates the Ace file (control file) and the project root class (entry point of the application) for you, and gives you access to ISE Assembly Manager to import other .NET assemblies. Once you have imported the assemblies, you can edit types of the imported assemblies. ISE Assembly Manager will check the consistency of your modifications before saving the changes.

Forth

      Dataman is publishing Delta Forth .NET, a simplified dialect of the Forth programming language. Delta Forth .NET integrates into the Microsoft .NET platform and can interoperate with programs written in other .NET languages such as C#, Visual Basic .NET, and JScript. Since it is a compiled language, many of the traditional Forth concepts related to vectorized execution of words have been removed. Delta Forth for Java has been around since 1997. Today, Delta is great for academic environments or anywhere that Forth is the language of choice.

Send your New Stuff to Theresa at newstuff@microsoft.com.
Theresa W. Carey is a freelance writer who lives in California. Her byline has appeared in Barron's and PC World.