Visual studio-2012-product-guide

Microsoft
Visual Studio 2012
Product Guide

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© 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2012 is an integrated solution that
enables individuals and development teams of any size to turn
their ideas into exceptional, compelling applications. It enables all
stakeholders involved in software delivery to take advantage of
state-of-the-art tooling to create outstanding experiences that
delight the end users of your consumer and business applications,
with a simplified development solution that enables quality through
all the tasks and roles involved in a software project.
With Visual Studio 2012, you enhance your team’s ability to
implement state-of-the-art developer practices that are adapted
to your team’s optimal rhythm. It provides workflows and tools
that shorten delivery cycles, includes customers and operations in
software construction, and eliminates waste. As a result, you reduce
risks, solve problems faster, and continuously deliver value that
exceeds customers’ expectations.
This Visual Studio 2012 Product Guide provides a comprehensive
overview of scenarios and features regarding:
• The new integrated development environment (IDE)
• Windows® 8 development
• Web development
• Cloud development
• SharePoint development
• Application Life Cycle Management tools
This guide also provides information about the benefits that Visual
Studio 2012 offers to diverse stakeholders in software delivery
projects, including testers and operations staff.
3

Contents
Introduction to Visual Studio 2012 8
Visual Studio 2012 11
Deploying Visual Studio 2012 13
Visual Studio 2012 Product Family 14
What’s new in Visual Studio 2012 18
Developing to standards 18
Summary 19
Visual Studio 2012
Developer Experience 20
New User interface 21
Project Compatibility 21
Managing the Environment 22
Getting Started with Community Code and Extensions 30
Platform Experience 35
Services Experience 45
Summary 49
Developing for Windows 8 50
Windows 8 Applications
are Simple to Use 51
Windows 8 Applications Can Easily
Connect and Communicate 53
Windows 8 Applications Can
Adapt to Their Environment 54

are Device Friendly 54
Windows 8 Applications are
Mobile and Scalable 55
Trustworthy and Safe 56
Windows Runtime and
application model 57
Building Windows Store applications
with C++ by Using Visual Studio 2012 71
Designing Games for Windows 8 75
Summary 77
Developing for the Web 78
Develop to Standards 79
Find Problems Faster 86
Develop for a Modern Platform 89
Develop Web services 93
Summary 99
Developing for the Cloud 100
Azure Roles 101
Coding for Azure 107
Windows Azure SQL Database 112
Publishing to the Cloud 113

Building Hybrid Cloud Solutions
with Windows Azure 117
Profiling and Tracing Web Applications
and Services in the Cloud 119
Enabling Continuous
Delivery in the Cloud 120
Building and Deploying Applications to the Cloud by
Using Visual Studio LightSwitch 121
Summary 127
Developing for SharePoint 128
Accelerate SharePoint Site Development 129
Easily Incorporate Silverlight Web
Parts into SharePoint Sites 133
Quickly Reuse Items from
Existing SharePoint Sites 135
Optimizing and Profiling SharePoint Code 137
Unit Testing Your Code and Mocking
SharePoint Components 138
Summary 141
Application Life Cycle Management
with Visual Studio 2012 142
The Benefits of Visual Studio 2012
and Team Foundation Server 2012 144
Increasing Efficiency and Reducing Waste 145
Features in Visual Studio 2012 149

Visual Studio Team Foundation
Server 2012 in the Cloud 186
Support for Heterogeneous Environments 191
Conclusion 196
Visual Studio 2012 for Other
Project Stakeholders 197
Product Managers and Designers 198
Project Managers 199
Team Leaders and Architects 200
Customers 200
Testers 202
End-user Developers 204
Conclusion 207
Feature Matrix 208
This product guide includes Microsoft Tags to make it easy
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After releasing Visual Studio 2010, the Visual Studio team took a step back to
look at the significant trends in the software construction world and to absorb
ongoing feedback from customers. Some important trends became apparent.
In a bid to differentiate themselves and increase their competitive advantage,
businesses were investing more in custom software development than in off-
the-shelf solutions. There has been an explosion of innovative software targeted
at consumers. Development has also become even more of a team sport,
involving many more non-developer stakeholders and requiring more advanced
development practices. Finally, there has been an explosion of new platforms,
even as web development becomes more critical to successful software delivery.
Introduction to
Visual Studio 2012
8

Consequently, the Visual Studio team wanted to ensure that Visual Studio 2012
included the tools needed to help users to quickly develop amazing applications
for both businesses and consumers.
Businesses increasingly use custom software to stay competitive. Stakeholders at
every level are now critical to ensuring that an application is successful. End users
also must be involved in order to ensure that the application is functional, efficient
to use, and easy to learn. Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio Team Foundation
Server together make it easy to include participants from within and outside of the
business during the development process.
Software development is shifting from being primarily an enterprise-driven process
to incorporating a consumer focus, resulting in the emergence of a plethora of
applications aimed at the consumer market for new device platforms. The explosion
of these new device platforms is another major new challenge for developers.
Previously, most applications ran either on a server or on a desktop. Today, many other
platforms are common; smartphones and tablet devices are becoming ubiquitous.
Developers must either create applications that work across multiple platforms with
a consistent user experience, or make applications tailored to each platform but
<POSSIBLE IMAGE DEPICTING
CONSUMERISM/MASS MARKET>
9

implementing consistent business logic. They also need to create a connected
experience that allows end users to move seamlessly among platforms and devices.
Visual Studio 2012 makes it easy to develop applications for multiple platforms,
including Windows Phone smartphones, slate devices running Windows
(including the new full-screen tailored applications for Windows 8), the Xbox®
360 console, and of course on traditional desktop computers. Portable libraries
enable developers to write code once, compile it once, and deploy the compiled
assembly everywhere. With Team Foundation Server, it is easy to work on
alternative platforms and still maintain control of source code and project
timelines, and to integrate a disparate set of third-party development tools.
Another major change is the introduction of app stores. Often tied to a particular
platform (or at least to a specific platform manufacturer), app stores enable
consumers to quickly search for and acquire an application. For example,
Windows Phone has the Windows Phone Marketplace and Windows has the
Windows Store. These stores provide significant opportunities for software
developers to reach markets that had previously been difficult to penetrate.
10

Applications can be monetized, either by charging for the application or
by including advertising in the application. Visual Studio 2012 provides
integrated tools to publish software to these stores and to expose applications
to a large and potentially lucrative market.
Visual Studio 2012
Visual Studio has been designed to ensure that developers can provide a
continuous flow of value to the business. The interface has been revamped
to remove significant clutter from the screen, while still providing fast
access to frequently used features. Removing unnecessary distractions
helps developers remain focused on the key development tasks.
The software development ecosystem is evolving, and Visual Studio supports
not only developers but also many other people involved in the software
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development process. Now stakeholders become part of the process early
on, and as requirements change, Visual Studio enables you to capture those
changes and to rapidly update your application. Productivity enhancements
help developers to work faster. Visual Studio now builds applications more
quickly and includes new and enhanced tools that make debugging easier.
With the advent of new platforms and new distribution channels, new challenges
and new opportunities arise. Applications often must be developed for many
platforms, each with subtly different requirements. Visual Studio helps developers
to create applications that span device boundaries. Project templates, debugging
tools, and portable code libraries all help to make this process easier. Visual Studio
even enables you to upload your application directly to the Windows Store.
Another significant change is the increase in applications that use and implement
services to access data. From games with scoreboards to weather forecasts and
traffic reports, many applications use services to provide up-to-date and relevant
information. Applications can easily go viral and very literally be an overnight success.
If this happens, you need to ensure that your services providing the data can cope
with the sudden influx of requests. Visual Studio supports developers by enabling
them to create solutions that are highly scalable, supporting a range of models from
durable full duplex synchronous services to high-throughput asynchronous services.
Developing a scalable solution is only half the challenge: You must also provide a
suitable environment to act as a host. With Visual Studio you can develop for a range
of infrastructure choices. Whether you choose to target a physical server, a virtual
server, or a private or public cloud, Visual Studio is your solution. If you decide to
use the Windows Azure™ public cloud offering, you can deploy directly from Visual
Studio to the cloud. As your application matures, you can perform in-place updates,
and when your application goes viral you can easily scale out your application.
By enabling developers to focus on the code, involving stakeholders both within
and outside the business, and by making deployment easy, Visual Studio helps to
ensure that your software development team continuously delivers business value.
12

Deploying Visual Studio 2012
Visual Studio 2012 is now easier than ever to purchase, install, and upgrade.
We have worked hard to make Visual Studio 2012 projects backwards
compatible, making Visual Studio easier to deploy. When you open an
existing project by using Visual Studio 2012, in many instances no changes
are made to the project. Where changes are necessary, they are backwards
compatible with Visual Studio 2010. This enables members of the team
to continue using Visual Studio 2010 while they collaborate on a project.
Rather than forcing all developers on the team to migrate simultaneously,
they can upgrade to Visual Studio 2012 when it is most convenient.
Developers wishing to create applications for Windows 8 can take advantage
of the free version of the product, Visual Studio Express for Windows 8.
13

In addition to making Visual Studio faster, this release includes new tools
that enable teams to create high-quality software, and ensure that all
stakeholders remain involved in the development process. Visual Studio,
together with the other tools in the Visual Studio 2012 product family,
encourages agile development for rapid stakeholder feedback.
Visual Studio 2012 Product Family
Creating software involves many other team members besides developers.
Agile methodologies enable stakeholders such as architects, product managers,
designers, program managers, testers, operations personnel, and end users
to have much greater input into the application development process.
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 enables all stakeholders to
participate as equal members of the development team throughout the
application life cycle. New connectors and integration points enable operations
staff and project managers to work more closely with the development team
to realize faster delivery cycles and to add real business value. Visual Studio
Team Foundation Server 2012, in common with previous versions of Visual
Studio Team Foundation Server, is available for installation on a local server.
However, there is now another option. Team Foundation Service is available
as an online software-as-a-service (SaaS) version of Team Foundation Server.
14

It is a fully hosted solution offering easy configuration and a relatively small
upfront capital expenditure. This gives organizations that previously did
not want to invest in or maintain a local server the opportunity to take full
advantage of the capabilities of Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012.
Blend for Visual Studio 2012 enables designers to create visually stunning
applications. Applications tailored to Windows 8 can use XAML to
define the user interface, ensuring that designers can continue to use
their existing design skills. Portability between Visual Studio 2012 and
Blend has been improved, and the design surface in Visual Studio has
15

been upgraded to more closely match the experience in Blend. These
improvements make it easier for designers and developers to work
together to make visually stunning, highly functional applications.
Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012
are designed to work together. However, some teams may be using a
different development environment, such as Eclipse™. Visual Studio Team
Foundation Server 2012 provides adapters to connect to supported
IDEs so that developers can work in their preferred development
environment. These adapters also work with Team Foundation Service.
16

Visual Studio Test Professional 2012 helps to ensure that the testing
process is fully integrated into the software development lifecycle. With
Test Professional, high-quality software testing is now a preeminent part
of the development process. Test plans and testing can be performed
more quickly by using the same tools as developers. Test Professional
provides many features to make testing applications easy, including:
• Support for application testing on remote devices without
installing Visual Studio 2012 or Test Manager on the device
itself (a small test agent must be installed on the device).
• Reusable software test plans that include tests and configurations.
• Manual test plans that test managers can use to collect data for bug
reports and for visualizing project progress against the test plan.
• Exploratory testing to enable testing without requiring a formal test
plan, by simply using the application and Test Manager to record and
document actions, attach screenshots, record steps, and create a test
case to ensure that any bugs that are discovered are addressed.
• Automated testing in a virtual or physical environment, and performed
on a variety of devices, spanning platforms as necessary.
17

What’s new in Visual Studio 2012
Visual Studio 2012 includes support for many of the platforms
and environments in which code now runs.
What’s new for Windows 8
Windows 8 provides many new opportunities for developers. Developers
who are familiar with the Visual C#® or Visual Basic® languages can
use their skills to develop the new style of tailored applications for
Windows 8. Web developers can employ JavaScript™, and the JavaScript
libraries in Windows 8 enable web developers to leverage the full
power of the new Windows Runtime available in Windows 8.
What’s new for the web
Developers can use HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript to create modern web
applications that render perfectly on many devices and platforms. Visual Studio
2012 includes full support for all of these languages, supporting script loaders
for JavaScript and enabling the CSS workarounds used to support older browsers.
In addition, ASP.NET web forms now provide client-side validation and object
binding to make development faster and the user experience better.
For developing and debugging web applications, developers can take advantage
of Internet Information Server (IIS) Express. This is a lightweight version of IIS,
configured in Visual Studio 2012, which is suitable for testing your applications.
Web applications that store data can use the new LocalDB, a lightweight version
of SQL Server®, with full fidelity to both SQL Server and SQL Azure™, ensuring
that you do not need to change any code when you deploy your application.
Developing to standards
As platforms have evolved, software developers have faced many challenges
to ensuring that their applications are portable. Developing to industry
standards helps to ensure that applications work. Visual Studio 2012
provides first-class support for many development language standards.
18

Summary
Visual Studio 2012 gives you the power you need to provide a continuous
flow of value to your business. You can use the Visual Studio product family
to involve stakeholders in projects early in the process. By developing in an
agile style, you ensure that you continue to meet the needs of the business
and therefore continue to add value. Visual Studio enables you to develop
applications for a multitude of devices, which expands your potential base of
users. You can also use Visual Studio to create highly scalable services for your
applications and web sites. Support for a flexible infrastructure ensures that
your applications and supporting services can grow with your user base.
19

Visual Studio 2012 incorporates thousands of improvements for developers
that make it easier to be productive, to collaborate seamlessly within
teams, and to focus on creating value for end users. The core development
environment has been revamped and refined based on developer feedback.
New technologies have been added to the .NET Framework, bringing critical
improvements to familiar languages including Visual C#, Visual Basic®
, Visual
F#, and ASP.Net, as well as adding new standards-based support for C++
and JavaScript. Of course, Visual Studio continues to provide a support
environment for Python™, Ruby™, and many other languages. Visual C# and
Visual Basic developers also benefit from an additional project template,
Visual Studio 2012
Developer Experience
20

enabling them to create Windows Runtime components. Project templates have
also been updated to support Process Lifetime Management (PLM) behavior,
so that pages will save and load state upon being suspended or resumed.
Revamped MSDN subscription benefits mean that it is easier than ever
to test your software on any target Microsoft platform. Redesigned
developer centers provide a complete on-ramp to creating any kind
of application and turning your ideas into great software.
New User interface
Visual Studio provides an environment in which developers can be more
productive and work without interruptions caused by their tools.
The first change you will see in Visual Studio is the new developer user
experience. The minimalist style of Visual Studio puts more emphasis on
your code and subtly blends the application controls into the background.
New dynamic toolbars and reduced UI chrome mean more workspace
is available for viewing and exploring your code. Core elements such
as Solution Explorer, Preview tabs, and History now have even more
functionality to help you understand your code without opening up
additional windows. When new extensions are available, subtle notifications
give you that information without breaking the flow of productive work.
Project Compatibility
Project compatibility enables developers working in different versions of
Visual Studio to work together. Developers on a team do not need to upgrade
simultaneously to the latest version of Visual Studio, and project compatibility
ensures that all developers can continue working together. Moving to Visual
Studio 2012 is a seamless operation that in most cases does not require
you to modify your projects. Simply open a Visual Studio 2010 project in
Visual Studio 2012 and begin working on your application. Furthermore,
Visual Studio does not change the format of your solution or project files,
which means that developers using Visual Studio 2012 can collaborate on
the same projects as developers who continue to use Visual Studio 2010.
21

Some project types may require a conversion operation when migrating
from Visual Studio 2010. In these cases, the first time you open the
Visual Studio 2010 project, Visual Studio 2012 automatically performs
the conversion. Thereafter, the project loads seamlessly and silently.
This operation is fully backwards compatible, so that projects opened
in Visual Studio 2012 will continue to work in Visual Studio 2010.
Managing the Environment
Managing your environment can help you become more productive.
More demanding hardware and additional displays give you the power
to work faster, but the ability to effectively manage your resources is
critical. Visual Studio now includes features that help you take advantage
of the power of modern computers, enable you to work seamlessly
across multiple monitors, and quickly find what you are looking for.
22

Search Everywhere
Visual Studio adds search functionality throughout the environment (code,
menus, dialog boxes, and controls) to make finding what you are looking for
fast. Searching is not limited to just your code, but extends across the entire
environment helping you to quickly locate the commands and functions you
need. Below are just a few examples of how search is now integral to the IDE.
Quick Launch
Visual Studio 2012 Quick Launch helps you locate commands.
The Quick Launch dialog box is always available in the toolbar
and is accessible via the Ctrl + Q shortcut. Specify a keyword
in the search box to access the command that you want to
use, and the Quick Launch dialog box displays all menu items
in the Visual Studio IDE that match this keyword. To make
searching for regularly used features even faster, recently
used items are grouped at the top of the search results.
Quick Find
Quick Find lets you search through your code. You can specify the
search criteria as a string to perform simple matching, and you can
also modify the search options to perform pattern matching by
using regular expressions. Matching strings are highlighted in the
Editor window, enabling simple movement between matches.
23

By default, Quick Find
searches the current file.
You can easily broaden
the scope of the search to
encompass all files. You
can also perform a Find
and Replace operation
from Quick Find.
Updated Add Reference Dialog
The Add Reference dialog box is used for adding assembly references
to projects. It also intelligently caches references to .NET Framework
assemblies and COM libraries for faster startup. Indicators identify
which assemblies are already referenced in a project.
You can use the Search Assemblies dialog box to quickly search all assemblies.
24

Search Enabled Toolbox
The toolbox is searchable to provide fast access to controls during development.
Error List
An enhanced error list enables developers to find related compile-
time errors or to quickly check for a specific error.
Before: After:
25

Navigating and Understanding Solutions
As hardware becomes more powerful and user expectations increase, applications
become more complex and an increasing number of resources are used in
projects and solutions. It is axiomatic that complexity increases as more time is
invested in an application and more features are added. As a result, most code
bases tend to expand. The Visual Studio IDE includes powerful features to help
developers to navigate and understand ever more complex solutions.
Document Tab Well
A typical Visual Studio project consists of many files, and developers often will
have a number of files open at the same time; it can become difficult to keep
track of them all. Visual Studio provides more control over how it organizes
open files displaying XAML or HTML markup, code, resources, properties,
configuration data, and graphics by enabling you to pin documents to the
“tab well.” The tabs for all unpinned documents appear to the right side.
The tab well also works with multiple monitors. If you drag a document
from Visual Studio to a second monitor, it includes its own tab well. You
can drag other documents into the same window, and their tabs will
appear in the tab well. Using this approach, you can keep your primary
documents and code open on your main monitor while having any
additional documents displayed and accessible on a second monitor.
26

Solution Explorer
Solution Explorer has been extended to more easily understand the
structure of complex projects, enabling you to visualize the elements of
your applications, and helping you to locate items much more easily.
For example, expanding a XAML file in Solution Explorer also opens the code-
behind file. Visual Studio displays the methods, properties, fields, events, and
delegates in an object browser. Required information is in one easy-to-find place,
and can be further explored to reveal type information for objects and methods.
The search bar in the Solution Explorer window enables you to
locate items in your solution that match a specified string, and
you can also limit the items displayed in Solution Explorer to
the files that are currently open, unsaved, or edited.
The Create new window containing a copy of the content of this window
button in the Solution Explorer toolbar opens a new Solution Explorer
window with the focus on the currently selected item. You can drag this
window to a second monitor and combine it with a tab well window to
effectively create a view of Visual Studio that is specific to a single file,
class, or other item. These settings persist when you close Visual Studio.
28

Preview Tabs
Solution Explorer makes finding the right file much easier by displaying the
file contents in a preview tab prior to opening it. As you move between
files in Solution Explorer, the preview tab recycles. When you find the file
you are looking for, you simply start editing the file and Visual Studio
automatically converts your preview tab to a normal tab. This significantly
reduces tab well clutter and can help to make you more productive.
29

Getting Started with Community Code
and Extensions
Visual Studio 2012 makes it easy to access community code. You use the
Extension Manager to install, manage, or access the online gallery to which
Microsoft and third-party developers can upload simple-to-install add-
on extensions. In Visual Studio 2012, if an extension developer updates
an extension that you are using, the IDE notifies you of the update to
ensure that you always know you are using the most recent version.
One useful new extension included with Visual Studio is the NuGet Package
Manager, which you can use to add packages to your projects. For example, the
Error Logging Modules and Handlers (ELMAH) logging library is often used by
30

web developers. Installing the ELMAH logging library includes adding assemblies
and requires specific changes to configuration files. The NuGet package installer
adds the necessary files and makes the appropriate changes to configuration files.
The Web Platform Installer (Web PI) is a stand-alone tool that makes it
easy to get the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including
IIS, SQL Server Express, .NET Framework, and Visual Web Developer.
31

In addition to web platform components, the Web PI also enables
you to install several common, free web applications.
Performance Improvements
Visual Studio includes significant improvements to make it faster
and more responsive than previous versions. These include:
• Using less virtual memory, which reduces
the footprint and resources required.
• Loading projects asynchronously and loading key parts of
the project first, so that developers can start working faster.
• Making better use of multi-core processors when compiling applications.
32

Language Support
Visual Studio now supports Language Interface packs, making it much easier to
change the language of the user interface without installing additional versions of
Visual Studio. Personalization settings are preserved when you switch languages.
Designer Enhancements
Visual Studio includes a new design surface for creating great looking applications
and user interfaces. Project formats are now consistent between Blend for Visual
Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2012, and both IDEs use the same designer surface.
This ensures that the application renders identically in both environments. Blend
provides powerful design tools that help developers to optimize the look and
feel of their applications. Blend offers a number of improvements, which include:
• DOM manipulation improvements. Designers can now identify
elements that have been moved or reparented by JavaScript.
• Artboard improvements. The Artboard now supports grid lines
and snap to grid lines, the ability to turn adorners on or off, the
ability to select all elements, and margin and padding value indicators.
• Improvements to CSS support. IntelliSense®
now indicates
syntactically invalid CSS selectors, and users are
notified when properties are unrecognized.
33

Team Explorer
Team Explorer enables developers and other team members to browse project
source code, work items, builds, and other data stored in Team Foundation
Server. With Team Explorer, team members can connect to Team Foundation
Server, Team Foundation Server Express, or Team Foundation Service (the SaaS
version of Team Foundation Server). All members of the Visual Studio 2012
family, including the Visual Studio 2012 Express versions, include Team Explorer.
Platform Experience
Asynchronous Programming
Users expect applications to remain responsive. Performing long-
running tasks asynchronously can help to achieve this. Visual Studio 2012
together with Windows 8 includes key enhancements to help developers
create applications that incorporate asynchronous code.
The C# and Visual Basic languages have been extended with the async method
modifier and the await operator, enabling a programmer to easily specify the
code that initiates a long-running task, and to indicate which code to run when
the task completes. This dramatically simplifies the code required to create an
asynchronous method. Developers can use the Task Parallel Library within a
method labeled with the async modifier to perform an action asynchronously.
<CODE>
Task.Run(() =>
{
TimeConsumingMethod();
});
</CODE>
35

At compile time, the compiler decorates asynchronous methods
with an attribute that can help improve toolability support, such
that via reflection you can find the compiler-generated state
machine that underpins a particular asynchronous method.
Alternatively, developers can use many of the new methods added to
the Windows Runtime, and made available to managed applications,
that perform common system operations asynchronously. The Windows
Runtime exposes asynchronous APIs for all tasks that may take some
time to perform, such as reading from or writing to a file.
<CODE>
StorageFolder folder = ApplicationData.Current.LocalFolder;
folder.CreateFileAsync(“MyFile.txt”);
</CODE>
In addition to providing this asynchronous functionality, developers can
also use the new keywords to provide asynchronous support to Windows
Communication Foundation (WCF) services. When a developer needs to call an
asynchronous operation in a service, Visual Studio generates a proxy class that
correctly invokes the operation with little additional effort from the developer.
Portable Libraries
Visual Studio 2012 provides tooling to develop for several different platforms,
including the desktop, web, Windows Azure™ cloud, Windows Phone, and
Xbox®
360. For developers who needed to develop across these platforms by
using previous versions of Visual Studio, code had to be recompiled for each
target platform, thus creating many versions of the same application logic,
each of which needed to be maintained separately. This, duplicated the effort
required when fixing bugs or changing the business logic of an application.
Visual Studio 2012 includes support for portable libraries that can help to
resolve this problem. A developer can create a library based on the Portable
Class Library project template. Using the template, the developer creates a
36

project and chooses the target platforms. The code is automatically restricted
to the functions that are common across these platforms. For example, string
concatenation is the same across platforms, and so is permitted in a portable
library, while file system access can be different and so is not permitted.
Portable libraries are binary portable assemblies, meaning that you can
copy the same assembly to multiple platforms without recompiling. In the
event of an update, you simply recompile the portable library once and
deploy it into all of your applications. In this way, developers can build and
reuse a portable core of their code and then for each platform build only
what is necessary to conform to platform-specific conventions. This enables
you to consolidate key investments and fixes in a single piece of code.
What’s new in the .NET Framework 4.5
The .NET Framework 4.5 includes many new features to make it easier
for you to develop more powerful applications. The following list
includes just a few of these new features and modifications:
• Integration with the Windows Runtime, enabling you to build managed
applications that can take advantage of the new features of the Windows
Runtime (such as the many new asynchronous APIs) in a seamless manner.
• Console UTF 16 support, which enables you to
use UTF 16 encoding in console applications.
• Application domain culture setting, which enables you to
set the application domain culture from within your application.
• Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) improvements,
which enable support for generic types, defining multiple
scopes, and support for convention-based programming.
• Customizable regular expression timeouts, which enable
you to configure timeouts for resolving regular expressions,
helping to ensure that your application remain responsive.
37

• Improved compression, which enables you to
reduce file size by more than in previous versions.
The .NET Framework 4.5 is compatible with Windows Vista®
, Windows 7
and Windows 8. For more information on the new features in the .NET
Framework 4.5 see the What’s New in the .NET Framework 4.5 page at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms171868(v=vs.110).aspx.
What’s new in Visual C#
Visual C# has been extended and enhanced to take advantage of the
new features provided by the .NET Framework 4.5. Examples include
• Built-in support for writing methods that can perform
tasks asynchronously through the async method
modifier and the await operator.
<CODE>
async Task<int> GetSizeAsync(string url)
{
var client = new HttpClient();
string data = await client.GetStringAsync(url);
return data.Length;
}
</CODE>
• Caller information attributes, which identify the source
code path, source code line, and member name of the caller during
development and debugging, or to create a diagnostic application.
38

<CODE>
public string GetCallerDetails([CallerFilePath] string file = “”,
[CallerLineNumber] int line = 0,
[CallerMemberName] string member = “”)
{
return string.Format(“File path: {0}, Line: {1}, Member name:
{2}”, file, line, member);
}
</CODE>
• Parallel compilation, which helps to shorten project build times.
What’s new in Visual Basic
Visual Basic has been similarly enhanced and its feature-
set brought more in line with that of Visual C#.
• Support for writing asynchronous methods
through the Async modifier and Await operator.
<CODE>
Async Function GetSizeAsync(url As String) As Task(Of Integer)
Dim client = New HttpClient()
Dim data As String = Await client.GetStringAsync(url)
Return data.Length
End Function
</CODE>
• Iterators, which enable developers to return (yield)
multiple items of the same type from a method.
39

<CODE>
Iterator Function GetCustomers() As IEnumerable(Of String)
Yield “Contoso”
Yield “Fabrikam”
End Function
</CODE>
• Call hierarchy, which enables you to locate code that calls
a particular member, types that implement a particular
interface, or members that override a virtual or abstract member.
• Caller information attributes, to identify the source
code path, source code line, and member name of
the caller during development and debugging.
<CODE>
Function GetCallerDetails(<CallerFilePath> Optional file As String = “”,
<CallerLineNumber> Optional line As Integer = 0,
<CallerMemberName> Optional member As
String = “”)As String
Return String.Format(“File path: {0}, Line: {1},
Member name: {2}”, file, line, member)
End Function
</CODE>
40

• The Global keyword, which you can use to create types in
a namespace outside of the project defined root namespace.
<CODE>
Namespace Global.MyGlobalNamespace
Class SimpleClass
End Class
End Namespace
</CODE>
What’s new in Visual F#
Visual F# continues to evolve to become a fully featured
language. The new enhancements include:
• Type providers, which you can use to generate types
that represent structured data. Visual Studio includes
type providers for the following data types:
o Open data (OData), a network service protocol that
enables data to be transmitted over a network or the Internet.
o Database connections, for example,
connections to a SQL Server database.
o Database schema (DBML) files that
are generated by using LINQ to SQL.
o Entity data model (EDMX schema) files that
are generated by using the entity framework.
o Web services that expose WSDL-enabling client
applications to more easily consume these services.
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o Resource (resx) files,
used in .NET Framework applications.
<CODE>
// Use a type provider to access a SQL Server database.
[<Generate>]
type dbSchema = SqlDataConnection<”Data Source=ServerName
InstanceName;Initial Catalog=CustomerDatabase;Integrated Security=SSPI;”>
let db = dbSchema.GetDataContext()
</CODE>
• Query expressions (LINQ), which you can use to write
LINQ queries in code in syntax similar to SQL. This can save
you time when writing code and make code more understandable
for a reviewer, thus helping to ensure a quality product.
<CODE>
// Use LINQ to select customer from the customers table in a database
let selectCustomers = query { for customer in db.Customers do
select customer }
</CODE>
• Auto-implemented properties, which enable you to add properties
without manually implementing the backing store for that property.
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<CODE>
// Class with automatic property.
type SampleClassType() =
// Declaring an automatic property.
member val autoProperty = 3 with get, set
let class1 = new SampleClassType()
// Accessing an automatic property.
System.Console.WriteLine(“{0}”, class1.autoProperty)
// Setting an automatic property.
class1.autoProperty <- 10
</CODE>
What’s new in ASP .NET
The features available to ASP.NET have been extended to incorporate the new
application models and development technologies for building web applications.
• Client-side validation. Visual Studio also adds support for JavaScript
form validation to ASP.NET web forms. This feature previously
existed for Model View Controller (MVC) developers.
<CODE>
public class SimpleModel
{
public SimpleModel() { }
[Required]
[StringLength(40)]
public string Name { get; set; }
}
</CODE>
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• Model binders. Visual Studio adds support for binding controls to
properties of a model in ASP.NET web forms applications. This is similar
to the functionality previously available to MVC developers.
<CODE>
<asp:GridView ID=”customerDeatils” runat=”server”
ModelType=”SimpleModel” SelectMethod=”GetModel”
AutoGenerateColumns=”false”>
<Columns>
<asp:BoundField DataField=”Name” HeaderText=”Customer Name” />
</Columns>
</asp:GridView
</CODE>
• CDN fallback support. Visual Studio adds support for loading resources
from a content delivery network (CDN) in order to improve page load
time. CDNs typically have very high bandwidth, and users may have
copies of files served by an application cached locally. Developers
can specify files hosted on CDNs. However, developers often have no
control over a CDN, and files may change. Developers can use the
EnableCdn property of the ScriptManager control to verify that resources
loaded from a CDN function correctly, but to load a local copy of the
resource if it fails.
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• Full HTML5 support, including semantic
elements such as email, tel, and url.
• Page Inspector. Page Inspector enables you to open a web page
within Visual Studio. By using the Page Inspector, developers can
make live changes to the DOM and edit CSS rules. When they
achieve the desired result, developers can easily copy
these changes to the correct source file.
• OAuth and OpenID support. Using these features, you can
create sites and permit users to sign in with credentials from other
sites, including Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft account.
• IIS Express. IIS Express provides a hosting environment based
on IIS that developers can use to test and debug web
applications. Visual Studio 2012 includes IIS Express as the default
web server for debugging web applications. Using IIS Express
ensures that developers can use features such as SSL while debugging.
• Local DB, a lightweight database engine that runs in the
context of the current user, reducing configuration effort in
the development environment. LocalDB provides a feature-
set that is fully compatible with SQL Server and SQL Azure, making
it simple to migrate from the development environment to production.
• Support for unhandled exceptions in JavaScript.
• Support for debugging T4 text templates.
Services Experience
MSDN Services and subscription benefits
As the world of software development becomes more complex, developers
need a wide range of skills and information to ensure that the solutions
they design, develop, and deploy will operate in many environments.
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MSDN subscriptions give your development team access to virtually every
Microsoft product and technology, helping to ensure that they make the
right technology choices when producing custom solutions. In addition,
MSDN provides high-quality resources, training, and support that will
help enhance the skills and productivity of development teams.
MSDN Subscriptions include:
• Development and test use of Microsoft tools, servers, and clients.
• Exclusive access to Visual Studio feature packs.
• Access to new versions of software (including the next pre-
release version) as well as previous versions for development
and testing purposes, or for migrating legacy applications.
• Access to the Windows Azure Platform and introductory offers.
• Professional technical support
• Online training resources
A range of MSDN subscriptions are available, with different prices
and benefits. For a full list, see the Buy an MSDN Subscription page at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/hh442902.aspx.
46

Team Foundation Service
Team Foundation Service is a SaaS offering from Microsoft that provides
the rich functionality of a local installation of Team Foundation Server
without the additional effort involved in managing, licensing, and backing
up a local server. For more information about Team Foundation Service, see
the chapter Application Life Cycle Management with Visual Studio 2012.
47

You can find more information about Team Foundation Service at
http://tfspreview.com.
48

Summary
Visual Studio 2012 provides a powerful new developer experience that
enables developers to be more productive than ever before. The IDE ensures
that developers are highly efficient by providing easy access to commonly
used tools and a streamlined user interface that enables developers to
remain focused on their code. Visual Studio enables developers to build
applications for Windows 8, and the new asynchronous programming
features ensure that developers can easily produce responsive and scalable
code, while portable libraries help developers to implement applications
and libraries once for use across multiple platforms and devices. MSDN
subscriptions provide developers with access to a range of Microsoft
resources and software for testing and development purposes, which makes
creating development and test environments easier and less expensive.
In short, Visual Studio 2012 helps developers code faster, write more efficient
code, and deploy to more platforms and devices with minimal extra effort.
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Great applications begin with great developers. Windows 8 gives you the platform
and tools to create rich application experiences that enable your customers to
focus on the tasks that are important to them. Applications are at the center of
the Windows 8 experience. They are alive with activity and vibrant content. Your
customers immerse themselves in your full-screen, Windows Store applications,
enabling them to focus on their content rather than on the operating system.
Signing up to sell your application through Windows Store means you can tap into
the broad customer reach of Windows, which spans markets around the world.
You will draw from a wealth of new tools and services that enable you to develop
Developing for
Windows 8
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and deploy applications faster and more profitably. Of course, you can also reach
and engage new customers by using the commerce platform of your choice.
With Windows 8 you can leverage your existing skills and code
assets to create great experiences for your customers:
• Web developers can use their HTML5, CSS3, and
JavaScript skills to build native applications for Windows.
• .NET developers can use XAML, C#, and Visual
Basic to build beautiful Windows Store applications.
• Game developers can use the power of DirectX® 11.1
to build amazing, immersive gaming experiences.
• Driver developers can use the new, integrated Visual Studio
2012 development environment to increase productivity.
With Windows 8, you are ready to imagine, build,
and sell the next great application.
are Simple to Use
The user interacts with the operating system shell by utilizing a consistent and
easy-to-learn set of gestures. For example, a user can tap an application tile
to start it running, and stretch and pinch elements in the user interface (UI) to
zoom in and out. The user can also slide the UI of a running application off to
one edge of the screen to reveal the shell, and then start another application.
Applications can present live tiles that dynamically surface their most important
or recent content, providing users with essential information at a glance
and without the need to start the application or bring it to the foreground.
Applications running in the background can also send notifications to the
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Windows 8 shell, which can then inform the user of significant events. For
example, an e-mail application can indicate that a new message has arrived,
and the user can then re-engage with the application to read the message.
Windows 8 applications can also make use of application contracts, which enable
applications to communicate with each other and to integrate with common
operating system features, freeing the user of your application from the need
to learn specific procedures for performing common tasks. For example, the
Search contract enables a developer to supply the search results from an
application to the Windows Search experience. The Share contract enables
one application to share the content it produces with another; the content
could be photographs, images, text, or a whole range of other types of data.
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Other functionality available in this manner includes the PlayTo contract, which
provides the ability to play content on the device if the user clicks the Windows 8
PlayTo button; the Print contract, which enables an application to output data to
a connected printer if the user clicks the Windows 8 Print button; and the Send
contract, which enables an application to send content to a connected device.
Windows 8 Applications Can Easily
Connect and Communicate
Applications can take advantage of Windows 8 connectivity to efficiently
communicate with the outside world. The operating system automatically
switches to the network connection with the best quality, and applications
can throttle the speed at which they send and receive data in order to deliver
the best possible user experience for an application, while simultaneously
balancing the requirements of other running applications. You can also
build applications that transmit and receive SMS text messages by using a
broadband adapter or a connected mobile phone. Windows 8 can also update
the live tile of an application based on network state or data received.
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Windows 8 Applications Can
Adapt to Their Environment
Windows 8 applications can take advantage of the sensors built into many
Windows 8 devices in order to adapt themselves to their environment. The
operating system makes available data from accelerometers, gyros, compasses,
GPS devices, ambient light sensors, and human presence sensors, among
others. Devices with near-field proximity sensors enable applications to
publish and subscribe to near-field communications events, enabling you
to build solutions that can easily connect and communicate across devices,
perhaps performing tasks such as automatically copying pictures and
videos from mobile phones and cameras, or sharing audio with friends.
are Device Friendly
Windows 8 can conserve resources such as memory or battery life by suspending
applications running in the background. A developer can write code to trap
the notifications that Windows 8 sends to an application and save any required
state information. The application can be resumed at a later time, either by
the user bringing it back to the foreground or as the result of a notification
received by the Windows 8 device. The developer can include logic to quickly
reapply the saved state and enable the application to continue running. To
the user, this transition from running in the background to being suspended
and then being reactivated is totally transparent. This strategy is useful for
applications that are expected to be inactive when they do not have the focus.
In other situations, an application may need to continue running
if, for example, it is carrying out a long-running operation such as
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uploading or downloading a large file, or performing a complex
calculation. To handle these scenarios, the developer can include
code that enables the program to continue with its operations.
Mobile and Scalable
Applications can roam. Windows 8 enables applications to synchronize their
state with another device via the cloud. For example, a user can install the
same application on their computer and their smartphone, run the application
on the computer, and perform some work. The user might then leave the
office, but transition to using the application on their smartphone while
accessing the same data. At home, the user may then switch to another
computer and continue running the application, again with the same state and
data. The different form factors and capabilities of devices such as PCs and
smartphones are not a barrier to well-designed Windows 8 applications. The
controls available to Windows 8 developers enable you to build applications
that can operate equally well whether they are running on a touch-based
device or a computer that relies on a keyboard and mouse to provide input.
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When you use the Windows 8 controls, animations, behaviors, and layouts,
you can design applications that retain their functionality and appearance
regardless of the aspect ratio, resolution, or orientation of the device screen, or
the user input method. The Windows 8 scaling system keeps your applications
working perfectly on devices with different display sizes and pixel densities.
Trustworthy and Safe
A Windows 8 application runs in a security context that controls the
resources that the application can access. A developer can adjust the
limits of this security context—for example, by enabling an application to
perform potentially sensitive operations—but the developer must explicitly
document these capabilities by providing an appropriate security policy.
A user installing the application can query this policy and choose not to
install the application if he or she is uncomfortable with its capabilities.
If you are building commercial applications, a key advantage of Windows 8 is
the way in which you can distribute software by using the Windows Store.
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You distribute an application by submitting it to the Windows Store.
Prior to your application being made generally available for download
and sale, it undergoes rigorous checks and tests to verify that it does
not contain malware or exhibit suspicious behavior, and that it meets the
security policy provided with the application. You also need to make your
applications available for user ratings and reviews. As a result, users can trust
applications that appear in the store, making them more likely to download
your software than they would be from a traditional e-commerce site.
Additionally, Windows 8 applications implement a safe, clean installation
procedure that consists primarily of copying application files to specific folders in
the AppData folder. When an application is uninstalled, these folders are deleted,
leaving no vestige of the application on the computer. As a developer, you do
not have to write the application installer or uninstaller because this functionality
is built into the operating system. Consequently, Windows 8 guarantees that
installing and uninstalling applications from the Windows Store will not gradually
degrade your system or leave behind any unnecessary clutter. This in turn makes
users more likely to download your software and install it on a “trial or buy”
basis, increasing the likelihood that they will buy your application if they like it.
Windows Runtime and
application model
The Windows Runtime (WinRT) is a straightforward set of APIs used to build
Windows Store applications. WinRT lets you build applications that look
great and are intuitive for your customers to use. WinRT APIs are available to
developers in multiple languages, including JavaScript, C++, C#, and Visual
Basic. The new Windows SDK for Windows Store applications also includes a
subset of traditional Win32, COM, and .NET Framework APIs, as well as HTML5
and CSS3 APIs that are accessible to Windows Store application developers.
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Choose from a broad range of application programming languages
To build fully native and robust applications that make the most of a
computer running Windows 8, you can develop by using web programming
technologies or by using familiar Windows programming techniques.
Windows Store applications using JavaScript leverage the
combination of HTML5 and CSS3 to define the UI, along with
JavaScript for implementing the application logic.
Windows Store applications using C++, C#, or Visual Basic use XAML markup
for the UI, with C++, C#, or Visual Basic for application logic. Game developers
can build Windows Store games by using C++ and DirectX 11.1 to take full
advantage of graphics hardware, or build casual games by using HTML5 or XAML.
Create immersive games using the power of DirectX
The new Windows 8 graphics stack is better integrated, making Direct2D,
Direct3D®, and DirectCompute API components easier to use together, and
requiring fewer duplicated resources than before. Capabilities previously
available only in XNA®, such as DirectXMath, XAudio2 API, and XInput
API, are now available. For the ultimate experience in gaming and video,
use DirectX 11.1 to bring stereoscopic 3D to your applications.
Compatibility with existing frameworks
The WinRT APIs are directly accessible to other Microsoft programming
frameworks, such as the .NET Framework or Windows C Runtime Library.
In most cases, accessing WinRT functionality from another framework
is as simple as importing the right namespace to your code and
taking advantage of simple object-creation semantics that are similar
to what you see in JavaScript, Visual C#, and Visual Basic .NET.
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WinRT features are represented by an Application Binary Interface (ABI) that exposes
functionality at a binary level rather than an object level, and includes additional details,
such as how to call a function, and how exceptions are handled or propagated. Any
programming language that can produce the appropriate binary objects can use an ABI,
which makes Windows APIs accessible from other programming languages. The ABI is
exposed in metadata assemblies (.WinMD files), enabling static languages like C# and
dynamic languages like JavaScript to understand the shape and structure of the WinRT API.
The new Windows 8 application models feature native extensibility, which lets you
build your own reusable component libraries. You first build your own custom
components with C++, C#, or Visual Basic. You can then use JavaScript or any
other supported language to call these components from your applications.
Tools and Resources for Developers
Get started writing applications quickly with the Windows 8 SDK, which
includes new versions of the free Visual Studio Express and Blend
for Visual Studio 2012. You also get the latest sample applications,
templates, and tutorials, as well as guidance from the experts.
The new Windows 8 SDK and the online Windows Developer Center (available
at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/br229518) provide everything
you need to start building your applications, including the latest tools, APIs,
compilers, debuggers, sample applications, and documentation.
Windows 8 and Windows Store make it simple for millions of customers from
practically anywhere in the world to find, try, and buy useful, high-quality applications.
You will find it easy to distribute, update, and get paid for the applications that
you develop. The site provides a Dashboard that enables you to improve your
applications by monitoring their success. You can also view reports on downloads,
revenue, usage, in-application transactions, customer ratings, and market trends.
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The Windows Developer Center provides you with clear and definitive guidance for
developing beautiful Windows Store applications. Other features include:
• Tool downloads, including the Windows 8 SDK
(which includes Visual Studio Express and Blend)
• Hundreds of sample applications
• Access to experts in the community
• Tutorials and guidance written by experts
Configuring, Packaging, and Publishing
With Windows 8, you no longer need to build a custom installer to enable
users to install your application. Instead, you provide an application manifest
that defines the properties and policies of the application, and then package it
up. Visual Studio 2012 provides the Manifest Designer to facilitate this task.
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After you have tested and packaged your application, you can submit it to
the Windows Store for verification. Visual Studio 2012 makes submitting
applications easy and includes tools to help you complete this task.
Making Native Code Libraries Available to Windows Store Applications
Visual Studio 2012 makes it easy to add a class library with C# or Visual
Basic to your application, and to create Windows Runtime types that you
can call from JavaScript. Internally, Windows Runtime types can use any
.NET Framework functionality that is allowed in a Windows Store application.
Externally, the members of such a type can expose only WinRT types for
their parameters and return values. When you build your solution, Visual
Studio builds your .NET Framework project and then executes a build step
that creates a WinMD file, which is included as part of your application.
Designing better applications: Visual Studio + Blend
Creating compelling and differentiated applications is not easy, but
Visual Studio 2012 and Blend for Visual Studio 2012 provide you with
the tools and flexible workflow you need to be successful. Making the
user experience (UX) an integral part of the development process is
critical to the success of a development project. UX problems found late
in the development cycle are a common source of cost overruns.
The combination of Windows 8, Visual Studio 2012, and Blend enable you
to create great user experiences, while structuring your application in the
tools of your choice. Whether you start developing your application in
Visual Studio or Blend is not important—either way, you will be creating
standards-based code that will make you productive right from the start.
Blend provides a modern design environment that enables you to drag and drop
elements, then move, style, and refine them via the interactive design surface
of Blend. The code that Blend generates is concise and tightly written, giving
you confidence that the final application will look and feel exactly the same
when deployed to a user’s device as it does when building it by using Blend.
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Visual Studio 2012 and Blend for Visual Studio 2012 share exactly the same
project and solution formats. In addition, they share the same designer surface,
ensuring that designs render identically in both tools. The tight integration
between Blend and Visual Studio 2012 enables you to use both tools in
parallel, seamlessly switching between them and giving you the flexibility to
work the way you want to work at any given point in time. This approach not
only eases the task of the developer and the graphics specialist, it also makes
it simpler to manage the entire development life cycle of the application.
Building Windows Store Applications with JavaScript by Using
Visual Studio 2012 and Blend for Visual Studio 2012
Semantic markup is the most productive way to structure Web
applications, providing a clean separation of logic and presentation.
With Windows 8, you can apply your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript skills
to build Windows Store applications. Visual Studio 2012 and Blend for
Visual Studio 2012 enable you to make the most of your current skills.
Creating a new Windows Store JavaScript application
Visual Studio 2012 includes a set of templates to get you started
building Windows Store applications quickly by using JavaScript.
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The Blank Application template provides the simplest starting point, providing
a basic, default project structure together with sample resources and images.
The Fixed Layout Application, Grid Application, Split Application, and Navigation
Application templates are designed to provide a starting point for more
complex user interfaces that address a variety of more advanced scenarios.
Designing and Styling the User Interface with HTML and CSS
Blend for Visual Studio 2012 has been updated to support development of HTML
and CSS user interfaces. The Blend design surface takes full advantage of CSS,
enabling you to create, change, and manipulate CSS styles in your applications.
Blend enables you to quickly select items and change their CSS properties.
The Property Inspector saves you time by showing only the properties
set on a particular element, and reduces frustration by identifying
which CSS style is actually being applied to a particular element.
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As you make changes, Blend treats markup differently, giving you the
control you need. No longer do you click the Bold button and wonder what
markup was generated. Instead, you simply assign an ID or Class to an
element and then use the property inspector to set properties as a Rule,
creating the type of clean, uncluttered code you would write by hand.
With drag-and-drop access to the Windows Libraries for JavaScript, Blend
accelerates the delivery of beautiful Windows Store applications. The innovative
interactive design mode of Blend enables you to view your application on the
design surface running as a live application. This mode lets you visualize different
application states and view the generated JavaScript content. When you leave
this interactive mode, the application remains paused, while the generated
JavaScript elements remain visible and in place. Content that appeared as the
application was running remains in view and the property inspector clearly shows
which attributes are read-only and which can be styled by using the same CSS
and tools used to style the original static content. This workflow accelerates
the development process for Windows Store application developers. The ability
to quickly experiment with and refine the UI of an application—without the
need to continually rebuild—saves a lot of time. Instant visual confirmation
encourages developers to experiment more freely and try new ideas.
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You can also add your own HTML markup and JavaScript
code directly to a project in Visual Studio 2012.
Visual Studio 2012 treats JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS as first-
class members of the development language community, providing
IntelliSense® for a great code-focused experience.
Testing your Windows Store applications with JavaScript
Visual Studio 2012 ships with an updated debugging and
diagnostic experience for JavaScript applications, including:
• Simulator. Windows Store applications run in a full-screen,
immersive context, and need to be able to respond to
hardware events such as screen rotation or calls to geolocation
APIs. The application simulator enables a developer to
simulate common touch, location, and rotation events.
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• DOM Explorer and Console. JavaScript developers depend on
browser-based tools that enable them to make changes to the
DOM of a running web application. With Visual Studio 2012, this
experience is part of the IDE, adding a DOM explorer and console
window that give JavaScript developers fine
control over their running applications.
• Debugging Support. The Visual Studio 2012 debugger
supports JavaScript. You can define watch lists based on
JavaScript variables, set breakpoints, single-step through
JavaScript code, and examine and set the values of JavaScript objects.
Building Windows Store Applications with C# and
Visual Basic by Using Visual Studio 2012
If you are familiar with the .NET Framework, Silverlight®
, Windows Presentation
Foundation (WPF), or Windows Phone 7 development, you can use your
existing skills and code assets by building Windows Store applications with
C# or Visual Basic. Your UI is built declaratively by using XAML markup. See
the Tour of the IDE for C#/C++/Visual Basic Developers page at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh441583(v=vs.110).aspx
for a more complete introduction to using Visual Studio 2012
with these languages.
Creating a new Windows Store application with C# or Visual Basic
Visual Studio 2012 can be used to generate the XAML markup for your UI.
When you create a new project, you can start with a blank project or a template.
The templates provide you with a selection of Windows 8 UI designs in order to
save you the time of creating your own. The following templates are available to
developers creating applications by using Visual C#, Visual Basic, and Visual C++:
66

• Application. This template enables you to create a unique interface
for the application by starting with no defined layout or controls. You
must define the layout for the application and add any necessary controls.
• Grid Application. This template includes a page with controls
laid out in a grid pattern. You can add additional controls or change
the content of the controls in the grid according to their requirements.
• Split Application. The split application template includes a
page split in a master detail format. The left side of the page
contains a list of items; clicking or touching an item causes the
right side of the page to update with the corresponding information.
• Class Library. This template enables you to create a
reusable class library for use in Windows Store applications.
• Unit Test Library. This template enables you to
create unit tests for your Windows Store applications.
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Designing and Styling the User Interface with XAML
Visual Studio 2012 has an integrated visual designer for XAML–based user
interfaces for Windows Store applications. You can use the designer to
generate the XAML that defines your UI, or you can edit the XAML directly.
The following illustration shows the XAML designer surface, the
XAML markup in the code editor, and the Toolbox window:
As a bonus, many of the inconsistencies that occurred between earlier
versions of Visual Studio and Blend are no longer present, because both tools
now share the same XAML design surface. You can therefore be certain that
applications will render in exactly the same way in both tools. This is great
for developers, who can now use Blend and Visual Studio interchangeably
and without worry, focusing on the strength of each tool: Blend to lay out the
structure of the UI and to add the textures, nuance, and beauty demanded by
successful modern applications, and Visual Studio for developing the business
logic of the application and making the UI respond to customer input.
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Developers and designers can also take advantage of the Device Panel to
author full screen landscape, full screen portrait, filled, and snapped application
view states. The Device Panel will now automatically change visual states
when the View is changed. Turning on recording mode enables changes
made on the Design Surface or Property Inspector to alter the currently
selected visual state, rather than always making changes to the base.
New features
In general, C# or Visual Basic developers can make use of any new
features in the Visual Studio 2012. For more information, see the Tour
of the IDE for C#/C++/Visual Basic Developers page at
The following sections describe some new feature highlights in Visual Studio 2012.
Debugging
Visual Studio includes a powerful debugger with many new features
to support debugging Windows Store applications, including:
• Robust unit test support by using the Microsoft Test framework.
• Windows 8 simulator (for example, for testing at
various resolutions, orientations, layouts, etc. with always-
on-top mode for natural usage in single-monitor scenarios).
• Improved remote debugging (for example, by using
a tethered device over a wired or wireless network).
• Edit and Continue enhancements (faster bug fixing
with ability to EnC around lambda expressions).
• Parallel Watch window, which evaluates
arbitrary expressions across all threads.
• Pervasive “flagging” support to enable debugging parallelism at scale.
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For more information, see Debugging and testing Windows Store applications at
Deep asynchronous programming support in WinRT
The model implemented by Windows Store applications is geared towards
performing tasks asynchronously, to help ensure that applications remain
responsive. Indeed, many WinRT APIs support only asynchronous operations. For
example, all UI operations involving dialogs and menus, file pickers, and all file
and web I/O operations are asynchronous. In short, anything that can take an
indefinite amount of time is handled in such a way that it prevents the application
from freezing or becoming unresponsive. Visual Studio 2012 includes debugger
support for asynchronous programming tasks, including enabling you to step
through and out of async methods as if those methods were synchronous.
To learn more about asynchronous programming with C# or Visual Basic,
see the Quickstart: Calling asynchronous APIs in C# or Visual Basic page at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh452713.aspx
Hybrid applications
You can utilize code written with a compiled language like C++,
C#, or Visual Basic in your JavaScript applications for Windows
Store. Visual Studio 2012 provides you with a means of authoring
an API in a DLL just by writing a class in C# or Visual Basic.
Concurrency Visualizer
To profile your parallel .NET applications and find performance bottlenecks,
Visual Studio 2012 includes the updated Concurrency Visualizer. This tool
shows how parallel code uses resources as it runs, including how many
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cores it uses, how threads are distributed among cores, and the activity of
each thread. This information helps you to confirm that your parallel code is
behaving as you intend, and it can help you diagnose performance problems.
Building Windows Store applications
with C++ by Using Visual Studio 2012
Visual Studio 2012 supports C++ developers with a set of easy to use C++
templates for building Windows Store applications. These templates are
focused on ensuring that C++ developers can easily build Windows Store
applications that take advantage of the touch-first experience of Windows 8.
Designing the User Interface
Visual Studio 2012 provides developers with a design surface they can
use to drag and drop controls and see the design surface update in real
time. This design surface supports XAML for native C++ applications.
IntelliSense is available for the properties and events exposed by controls.
C++ developers can use many of the templates available to Visual C# and
Visual Basic developers as a starting point for their applications. Visual Studio
2012 also includes a number of additional C++ templates, enabling developers
to take advantage of features not available through managed code.
Developers can also take advantage of the following
improvements to the standard templates:
• Virtualization support by default. The GridView
and ListView controls now take advantage of a header
region allowing the bound items to be virtualized.
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• Displaying only a subset of items in the GridApp template. Rather
than displaying the entire collection of items, only a
subset of items is displayed, which will help improve
the scalability and performance of your applications.
• Keyboard and mouse navigation, so users can navigate your
applications with back and forward buttons, and keyboard shortcuts.
In addition to the standard templates, these additional
templates are available to C++ developers:
• WinRT Component DLL. This template enables you to create a
dynamically linked server library that you
can use in your Windows Store applications.
• DirectX Application. This template enables developers
to create applications that use DirectX graphics.
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You can use Blend to lay out the UI and generate the
XAML code for your C++ application.
Implementing Application Logic with C++
Visual Studio 2012 provides the same facilities for rapid C++ code development
that are available to other languages. Comprehensive editing and IntelliSense
support for Windows Store applications with C++ means that developers
experience an IDE that is fully aware of new platform capabilities such us objects,
interfaces, and types. When designing applications, you can move seamlessly
between your XAML that defines the UI and C++ code that implements logic.
IntelliSense for your XAML objects is available within the C++ code editor.
The parallel programming support in the C++ concurrency namespace enables
developers to take advantage of multi-core and many-core architectures.
In Visual Studio 2012, the Parallel Patterns Libraries have been extended
to provide better performance, more control, and richer support for
the parallel patterns that developers need most. These include:
• The Parallel Patterns Library, which supports fork-
join parallelism, asynchrony, and task continuations.
• Agents and Messaging, which enable developers to express
dataflow pipelines that naturally decompose into concurrent units.
• Concurrency safe containers package, which provides common
Standard Template Library data structures
such as queue, vector, and map.
• A Customizable scheduler and resource manager, to facilitate the
smooth composition of the components that implement parallelization.
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are increasingly used for performing general
purpose computations. C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (C++ AMP)
delivers support for this approach and helps developers speed up the data
parallel algorithms implemented by their applications. C++ AMP is provided in
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the concurrency namespace. Developers can simply insert or wrap their data
in the new concurrency::array or concurrency::array_view template classes,
convert their code to use the new overload for the concurrency::parallel_
for_each method to iterate through this data, and then apply the functions
available in the data parallel API to implement their algorithms.
Testing and Debugging C++ Applications
Producing quality applications means testing earlier in the development
cycle. Visual Studio 2012 introduces a native framework for unit testing
in C++. This helps developers ensure that changes they make to their
code deliver the correct experience, and also helps developers find issues
during the code-build-debug cycle rather than during software testing.
Visual Studio ships with an updated debugging and diagnostic experience
for Windows Store applications built with C++. This support includes:
• A Windows Store application simulator. Windows Store applications
are full-screen and need to be able to respond to hardware
events like screen rotations or calls to geolocation APIs. The
simulator enables a developer on a single computer to run applications
and simulate common touch, location,
screen resolution, and rotation actions.
• Improved support for remote debugging. You can now
perform remote debugging by simply tethering your computer
to another computer with a single Ethernet cable or by using Wi-Fi.
• The Parallel Watch window. This window enables you
to observe the values of an expression across all threads
and processes, and perform sorting and filtering on the result.
• Updated concurrency Visualizer. The visualizer enables you to
profile parallel C++ applications to locate performance bottlenecks.
• C++ AMP Debugging. Debugging a C++ AMP application is
as straightforward as debugging any other C++ application.
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Designing Games for Windows 8
Windows 8 provides a high-performance platform that can take
full advantage of the speed and power of modern computers. With
DirectX 11 and the appropriate hardware, your applications can use
DirectCompute shaders to perform parallel data processing on the GPU
and obtain as much as an order of magnitude more computing power
than provided by a CPU alone. Windows 8 is an ideal environment for
running real-time, processor-intensive applications such as games.
Visual Studio 2012 with Visual Studio Graphics (VSG) tools has a renewed
focus on gaming, letting games developers be more productive and creative.
The VSG toolbar in Visual Studio 2012 provides access to resource editing,
visual design, and visual debugging tools for writing 2D and 3D games.
Viewing and basic editing of 3D models.
You can use VSG as a level design tool for game engines or as a code
generation tool for game development. You typically create game models
by using a third-party 3D modeling program. You then incorporate these
models into a content production pipeline that involves modeling, texturing,
rigging, animation, and level creation. VSG supports viewing and basic
editing of standard 3D model formats. This allows VSG to load models
created by other tools, or for other tools to edit models created with VSG.
Viewing and editing of images and textures
with support for alpha channels and transparency.
VSG includes powerful image and texture editing tools that upgrade
the existing image editing capabilities of Visual Studio with support
for alpha transparency, additional image formats, textures, and
extensibility. The existing Visual Studio 2010 image editor is retained
in order to support legacy icon and cursor file formats.
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VSG tools also support alpha blending or overdraw. This applies to pixel
editing operations such as moving/resizing a region, pasting an image onto the
current image, and image filters such as rotating a region by 90 degrees. For
example, when moving a selected region, that region can be blended with the
portion of the image under it or the region can overwrite all data under it.
Visually designing shader programs and effect files
Game projects typically involve a large number of materials, effects,
and shaders. These items are used to color, texture, and apply special
visual effects to objects. VSG includes a graphical design tool that you
can use to create effect files. You can then use these files as materials
on 3D models. VSG also enables you to define pixel shaders.
Debugging and diagnostics of DirectX based output
Visual Studio 2012 provides a built-in implementation of functionality
based on the existing PIX for Windows tool for debugging DirectX-based
games and applications. It includes and enhances many of the features in
PIX for Windows in order to help you diagnose rendering problems.
Visual Studio 2012 also includes a first-class High Level Shader
Language debugging experience, fully integrated into the Visual
Studio debugger, to help you identify and correct DirectX bugs.
You can extend the VSG tools by using JavaScript programs. For example,
you can introduce new commands and capabilities to the various tools; add
support for new import and export file formats; generate code snippets,
project templates, and code-behind files; and integrate with popular third-
party game engines that provide special effects generation tools.
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Summary
From the perspective of a developer, Windows 8 is a powerful and adaptive
platform for your next generation of applications. We have endeavored to
implement a modern and extensible framework to support your development
efforts, regardless of which language and programming paradigm you prefer.
Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012 provide the ideal development toolset,
enabling an end-to-end workflow that takes you from your initial idea all
the way through to your application being deployed to the Windows Store.
Tools that enable you to rapidly create the structure of your applications
and test them help you to discover user-experience and application-flow
issues early in the development cycle, when these issues are easy to fix. The
flexible workflow between the development tools allows you to function to
your strengths, seamlessly switching from one tool to the other, and enables
you to experiment and deliver the kinds of compelling and differentiated
application experiences your customers expect on modern devices.
Whatever your development background, we have the tools, platform, and
development languages to set you on the path to building amazing applications.
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Web developers use a range of technologies to create interesting,
attractive, and interactive sites. HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript are
the most common technologies used for this purpose because
they support the widest range of web browsers. As JavaScript
has matured as a technology, frameworks such as jQuery have
been created to help developers to code faster. Visual Studio
2012 supports many of these technologies and simplifies the
development process to help developers code faster and to
ensure that their code conforms to the latest standards.
Developing for
the Web
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Visual Studio 2012 is the tool for web developers who want to create a simple web
application quickly. Equally, Visual Studio 2012 is ideal for a team of professional
developers working on a large, rapidly evolving web application, because it
offers full support for source control, testing, code reviews, and deployment.
In addition to supporting the latest standards, developers need a modern
web platform. Visual Studio 2012 delivers just that by providing:
• Support for working with data, including simplified development
tools that make development, testing, and debugging easier.
• Support for authentication services from external
providers through Open Authorization (OAUTH).
• Support for mobile devices, including mobile-optimized views and pages.
• Support for hosting sites and services in the cloud with Windows Azure.
Debugging and resolving problems is often a significant part of the
development process. Visual Studio 2012 helps you to find problems
faster by offering numerous improvements to debugging tools, plus
new tools that bring browser DOM inspection right into the IDE.
Develop to Standards
Use the latest HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with jQuery
Users accessing a web application employ a variety of browsers. Some browsers
support plugins while others don’t, and all browsers have quirks that affect how
they display a site. Web standards exist to help ensure that web applications
look and work correctly regardless of the browser being used. HTML, CSS, and
ECMA scripts are the standards for developing cross-platform web sites. Previous
versions of Visual Studio supported developing web applications by using these
standards, but Visual Studio 2012 extends and significantly improves this support.
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Visual Studio 2012 includes full IntelliSense support for HTML5, making it
easier to develop conforming web sites. In addition, the code editor has new
productivity features that simplify web development. For example, Visual
Studio 2012 can automatically correct simple coding mistakes. For example, the
following shows how IntelliSense supports the new HTML5 video element:
Use CSS to Style Your Site
All but the most basic sites require styling, normally accomplished by
using CSS. The CSS editor in Visual Studio 2012 has been updated to
support the latest CSS3 standard and incorporates full IntelliSense.
Older browsers typically do not fully or properly support the W3C standards.
Developers expect to include various browser-specific workarounds to
ensure that their sites work correctly in these older browsers. Previously,
such workarounds would be marked as errors in the editor, but Visual Studio
2012 recognizes common browser workarounds and parses them correctly.
Visual Studio 2012 also includes many other productivity improvements, such as:
• Color picker. Use the new color picker to choose colors while editing CSS.
The color picker includes support for opacity and comparison of two colors.
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• Snippets. Snippets make it faster for developers to create
CSS. Visual Studio 2012 includes many snippets that can be used
out of the box, and a developer can easily define their own snippets.
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• Commenting. Use commenting to highlight a section
of CSS and place comments within the code.
• Automatic indentation. The editor automatically
indents the CSS hierarchically as it is developed.
• Region support. Define regions of markup similarly to
easily show or hide focus for a specific section of CSS.
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• Outline support. Outline sections of code to identify or hide code blocks.
Use jQuery and JavaScript to Make Your Site Interactive and Responsive
In addition to creating visually compelling web applications, developers
often need to create highly interactive and responsive sites. JavaScript
is the standard scripting language used by all modern browsers.
Using JavaScript on a web site has many advantages, including:
• Faster responses to user interaction by removing the need for a
page refresh every time the user changes an option or clicks a button.
• Reducing load on a server by pre-validating data in the browser. Data
that has already been validated on the browser
often passes any validation required by the web server.
This reduces repeat requests for submitting web forms.
Visual Studio 2012 incorporates the JavaScript engine used in Internet Explorer
9. This parser significantly improves the accuracy of JavaScript parsing when
compared to previous versions of Visual Studio, and ensures that the behavior
in Visual Studio 2012 matches that of the browser as closely as possible. Visual
Studio 2012 also provides support for script loaders that can improve page
performance and reduce the complexity of developing a site that contains
many JavaScript files. Developers simply select which JavaScript files they
are using, and Visual Studio provides full IntelliSense support regardless of
whether the file is loaded by using a master/layout page or a script loader.
In addition to the other changes, the JavaScript editor in Visual Studio
2012 contains a number of productivity improvements that align
JavaScript with other .NET languages such as Visual C#, including:
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• Go To Definition. Choose Go To Definition to move the cursor to
the object or function definition, even if it is located in a different file.
• Function overloads. Use JavaScript function overloads
to add multiple functions with the same name. IntelliSense
continues to parse code without displaying an error.
• Brace matching. Select an opening or closing brace to
automatically highlight the corresponding closing or opening brace.
• Outlining. You can expand or collapse functions and
code blocks to highlight the structure of your code.
• Smart indenting. The editor automatically indents
the script hierarchically, as it is being written.
• XML documentation comments. Use commenting to add comments
to object and function definitions, and to place comments within
the script. Comments are displayed by IntelliSense when writing code.
Use IntelliSense to Develop with Ease
IntelliSense is a key Visual Studio feature that has
been enhanced in Visual Studio 2012.
IntelliSense can make a developer significantly more productive by reducing
the time spent typing and by providing a list of options from which a developer
can choose. This reduces the need for the developer to refer back to the object
definition for the correct property name and casing. In some cases, the list of
options can be overwhelming. An auto-reduce feature (as they type, developers
are prompted with a shrinking list of appropriate possibilities for matching
property names) has been extended to support HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.
Visual Studio 2012 includes more triggers for IntelliSense, helping to ensure
that coding help is displayed whenever it may be useful. Also, shortcuts in
IntelliSense further reduce effort by providing fast access to common properties.
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Easily Develop Sites
.NET developers building a web site typically choose between an ASP.
NET Web Forms project or a Model View Controller (MVC) project. In MVC
applications, developers define classes that describe the data being used
by the page (this is the model). Views define the interface seen by the user,
and a developer or designer can change a view without changing any other
code. Application logic is handled by the controller. This approach separates
application logic from views, making for a maintainable web application.
Controls in the view are bound to properties of the model at runtime. The
developer does not need to write code to perform the binding because it
is handled by the framework. Developers using Web Forms previously had
to write code to bind controls to properties. However, in Visual Studio 2012
developers and designers can use object binding in Web forms applications,
simplifying the code and reducing repetitive development work.
While developers could always write their own JavaScript code to validate
user input on the client, MVC provides a simple syntax to annotate a
control without needing to write custom code. Visual Studio 2012 brings
this power to ASP.NET Web Forms. With previous versions of Visual Studio,
MVC developers could simply annotate properties in a model and the
framework would add client-side validation automatically. Visual Studio
2012 has bought this functionality to ASP.NET Web forms developers, who
can now also annotate properties for automatic client-side validation.
Validating input on the client can reduce the number of invalid submissions
to your site, and provides a more responsive interface for a user.
In addition to the new features added to Web Forms, Visual Studio 2012 includes
several IDE enhancements to make the development process easier, including:
• Chrome tasks in the editor. Perform chrome tasks while in
the code editor window, enabling you to configure data
sources and similar chrome tasks without switching to design view.
• Event generation in the source view. Generate a method stub for
an event when declaring the appropriate attribute in the code
editor window, without the need to switch to design
view or to generate method stubs manually.
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• Renaming ASPX pages. More easily change the name of an
ASPX page. Visual Studio 2012 automatically updates all references.
• Extracting to a user control. Select and extract the required markup to
create a new user control. Visual Studio 2012 updates the page to
include all necessary tag prefixes and registrations, and includes
the control in the correct place on the page. Re-use the control
elsewhere on the site as required.
Find Problems Faster
Test, Debug and Deploy with Confidence
A developer creating a web application must test and debug before deploying
the application to a production server. Because developer computers can
be very different from production servers, developers must be confident
that testing and debugging on their computers will match the results on the
production server. One issue facing developers is differing versions of the
.NET Framework. To address this issue, Visual Studio 2012 enables developers
to create applications that reference earlier versions of the .NET Framework,
and to ensure that they do not use features added in later versions.
When developing a web application, developers typically host the application
on their workstations for testing and debugging. Previously, the simplest
approach for this was to use the Development Web server provided with Visual
Studio. While this was easy to configure, there were significant differences
between the Development Web server and Internet Information Services
(IIS) software typically used on production servers. One solution to this
problem is to install IIS on the developer’s computer. While this strategy
closely matches the production environment, it is subject to limitations.
For example, the version of IIS is controlled by the operating system.
Visual Studio 2012 ships with IIS Express, a lightweight web server that includes
all of the core functionality of the current version of IIS. Using IIS Express,
Visual Studio 2012 enables developers to debug and test sites with minimal
configuration—including the power to perform a custom configuration, if
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necessary—and without the added requirement of using a full IIS installation.
Developers can configure IIS Express through Visual Studio. In addition,
administrative privileges are not required to configure IIS Express, making it a
viable option in environments where using administrative rights is not possible.
Visual Studio 2012 also ships with a new Publish Web wizard, providing not only
a new user interface, but a number of features that help ease the complications
and stresses of deployments. For example, updating connection strings on
publish, including more complex Entity Framework connection strings.
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View and Edit Web Pages in the IDE
To debug their sites, web developers often use tools in browsers to view
the (DOM) of the rendered page and to make changes to rectify issues.
Typically, the developer then copies these changes back to their development
environment. Visual Studio 2012 includes a new tool, the Page Inspector,
to simplify this process. By using the Page Inspector, developers can make
live changes to the DOM and edit CSS rules, and when they achieve the
desired result they can easily copy these changes to the source file. The
Page Inspector also enables developers to reverse engineer—with just a
single click—the rendered HTML, CSS, or JavaScript to the source file.
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Browsers typically support a dynamic approach to debugging in which the
developer can interact and run commands on an ad-hoc basis. Visual Studio
2012 adds the JavaScript console to the development environment, enabling
developers to set break points and single-step through their code. These
break points are persisted when the application stops, and are available
the next time the developer runs the application in Debug mode.
Develop for a Modern Platform
Develop for Mobile Devices
In almost all cases, developers want their sites to be accessible on as many
devices as possible, ranging from desktop and tablet computers through
smartphones. In the past, developers commonly created custom versions of
their sites to target various devices. This approach resulted in a significant
challenge, requiring complex, costly maintenance. Recent updates to web
standards, however, make it easier to develop cross-platform sites, and
most modern devices support the latest versions of these standards.
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Using the latest web standards helps to ensure that a site displays properly
on most devices. Sometimes developers must create a custom view of a
page for mobile browsers. This can be achieved in two ways. The first way is
to have the server return a correctly formatted page. The second method is
to have the page include styles that are only applied on devices that meet
particular criteria (for example,a screen size smaller than a specified value).
Visual Studio 2012 helps make developing for mobile devices easier by
supporting tools that optimize a page for a mobile device. For example, Visual
Studio now supports jQuery Mobile, which includes controls optimized for
mobile devices. By using a combination of these technologies, developers
can create sites that look great and perform well on mobile devices.
Visual Studio 2012 also supports user agent detection. Developers
can use this feature to detect the browser and platform of a
requesting device, and to then return an appropriate page version.
For example, the application may return a version of a page with
larger buttons if the request comes from a touchscreen device.
Easily Work with Data and State Information
Managing data and handling state information is one of the major differences
between developing a desktop application and developing a web application.
With applications that run on a local computer, state information and data
can be stored on the local disk in the context of the current user. For web
applications, many users make requests to the same web server. Data must
be stored between requests and identified to ensure that each user retains
the appropriate state information. For large web applications hosted by a web
farm, this data must be shared among servers. This is a common challenge for
web developers, and there are many approaches to meeting this challenge.
One approach is to save data in cookies that are transmitted to the server
with each request. The cookie identifies the request and is used to retrieve
data on the server. Visual Studio 2012 includes a new integrated development
database called SQL Express LocalDB, a lightweight database engine that
installs and starts quickly and provides full compatibility with both SQL Server
and SQL Azure. This ensures that developers can develop, test, and debug
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sites on their development computers with confidence that the sites will work
as expected when deployed to a production web server using a SQL Server
database. A site developed by using LocalDB will work in the cloud or with an
instance of SQL Server with only minimal configuration changes. To make the
process easier, Visual Studio 2012 provides tools that enable developers to
seamlessly deploy to the cloud or to an on-premises instance of SQL Server.
When developing a site that uses a SQL Express database, another common
problem has been that the database file would get locked by Visual Studio
or by the web site, and a database update may fail as a result. LocalDB
runs in the context of the current user and avoids this problem.
Integrate with Other Technologies
Writing JavaScript can be a time-consuming process, but developers can save
a lot of time during development by leveraging existing tools. For example, the
jQuery library includes shortcuts that can save significant time and effort. Visual
Studio 2012 fully supports jQuery and makes it easy to integrate with web sites.
Authentication is another area that can be time consuming to implement. While
ASP.NET has always included a powerful authentication provider, sometimes
developers did not want to implement it, if, for example, the developer did not
want to host a custom database. In Visual Studio 2012, ASP.NET web pages
support OAuth, which enables developers to integrate with external authentication
providers including Google®
, Yahoo®
, Facebook®
, Twitter®
, and Windows Live.
Using an external authentication provider can simplify the registration process
for the users of a web application, and can save the cost of implementing
an authentication provider. This can improve the user experience, which
in turn can help to achieve better sign-up rates. While this feature may
be useful to some sites, ASP.NET authentication is still available to
developers and still fully supported. ASP.NET authentication configuration
benefits from some of the IDE improvements in Visual Studio 2012.
Visual Studio 2012 includes an extension manager that can be used to add
new libraries and capabilities from trusted third parties. Additionally, the
NuGet third-party package management system (available in the gallery
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as an extension) enables developers to easily access other useful code. For
example, NuGet enables developers to include the Error Logging Modules
and Handlers library (ELMAH) in their project with minimal effort.
Improve Performance
Modern web sites may present large amounts of complex content, images, audio,
and other information. With a wired Internet connection, a user browsing such a
site typically experiences reasonable performance. However, more and more users
are viewing sites on mobile devices whose wireless connections are not as fast or
reliable as wired connections. Additionally, as the web has matured, performance
expectations have increased. Web sites are now expected to function as quickly
as desktop applications. Reducing the volume of data being transferred is one
way that developers aim to improve the performance of their web applications.
Visual Studio 2012 includes features to help ensure that sites load rapidly and
with minimal bandwidth use. Visual Studio 2012 supports asynchronous requests
using jQuery and JavaScript; these requests can update just a small part of the
page, which can be significantly faster than completely reloading a page.
Visual Studio 2012 also supports deferred loading, enabling developers
to create pages in which the content loads first and the scripts are loaded
afterwards. While the total time to download the page may not change
significantly, the perceived load time can be much faster because the
page renders while JavaScript files are still being downloaded. In some
circumstances, deferred loading may enable scripts not to be loaded at
all, saving bandwidth and delivering a real performance increase.
In addition ASP.NET now supports optimization, bundling, and minification
for script and CSS files. These features help developers to further
reduce the bandwidth requirements of their web application.
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Develop Web services
Web services provide a mechanism for developers to expose business
operations to the outside world. Developers can create applications to consume
a service, and these applications can run in the web, on the desktop, on a
mobile device, or on almost any platform that has the required connectivity.
Service developers can create services by using Windows Communication
Foundation (WCF). Visual Studio 2012 makes is easier than ever to develop
WCF services. For developers choosing between WCF Web API and ASP.
NET, there is now one choice: The Web API is now part of ASP.NET MVC.
Develop Asynchronous Services
Services can contain long-running operations. Service consumers often prefer
to invoke asynchronous operations to ensure that calling an operation does not
make the calling application unresponsive. Visual Studio 2012 makes developing
asynchronous operations in a web service easy. Service developers can use
the async and await keywords in the Visual C# and Visual Basic languages to
define asynchronous methods that implement these operations. For consuming
these operations, developers can simply create a service reference and Visual
Studio generates a proxy class to correctly handle the asynchronous behavior.
Defining an asynchronous operation:
<CODE SNIPPET>
[OperationContract (AsyncPattern=true)]
Task<string> GetData(int value);
</CODE SNIPPET>
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Consuming the service:
<CODE SNIPPET>
Service1Client client = new Service1Client();
return await client.GetDataAsync(3);
</CODE SNIPPET>
Use Workflows to Model Services
Business processes can often be modeled as workflows. In Visual Studio 2012,
you can easily create services based on workflows by using the workflow
designer. The designer is highly visual, making it simple to include other
stakeholders in the development process. In Visual Studio 2012, the workflow
designer has been improved and benefits from many new features, including:
• Activity annotations. You can add annotations to
provide additional developer documentation.
• Tree view. You can navigate large workflows
more easily by viewing the structure.
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• Pan gestures. You can easily pan through the designer
if the workflow does not fit on a single page.
• Error identification. You can find and directly navigate
to errors in the workflow designer from the error list.
• Expanded activity pallet. You can create workflows faster
by using the new activities available in Visual Studio 2012.
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• Consistent syntax for workflow expressions. If you are using
Visual C# to build workflows, you can now define expressions
by using C# syntax. If you are using Visual Basic to build
workflows, you can continue to use Visual Basic syntax in expressions.
Repurpose an Existing Service in a Workflow
A developer sometimes needs to create a workflow based on an
existing service contract, for example to upgrade an existing service
or if the service contract has been defined by another department or
company. Visual Studio 2012 supports contract-first services, enabling
the developer to create workflows based on existing contracts.
State machines can often be used to model business processes. Visual
Studio 2012 adds support for finite state machine workflows. A developer
can choose to use either code or the visual canvas to create a finite state
machine workflow, making it easy to include such a workflow in any service.
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Maintain and Manage Workflows
A typical workflow evolves over time. Business processes change and consumer
demand follows the latest trends. Developers must adapt their applications to
ensure that they remain relevant. For short-running workflows, the developer
may be able to simply update the workflow without impacting current users
(or by causing minimal downtime). For long-running workflows, this may
be more of a challenge. Workflow instances may be active or persisted,
and stopping them may not be an option. Visual Studio 2012 provides two
options to solve this problem. First, workflow versioning enables developers
to track which variant of a workflow is being used by a particular running
or persisted instance. The developer can run workflows side-by-side (SxS),
enabling current workflows to complete by using the old version of the
workflow, but creating all new workflows by using the new version. Or second,
the developer can choose to upgrade running instances of a workflow to the
new version, ensuring that any new requirements are correctly applied.
<SCENARIO IN PRACTICE>
Contoso is a fictional company that sells online software and uses a
workflow to model the purchasing process. During a recent promotion,
every customer received a free download of an e-book. When the
promotion ended, Contoso management decided that anyone who started
an order while the promotion was running should still receive the free
e-book. Developers used Visual Studio 2012 to deploy an updated version
of the workflow that did not include the free e-book. They used a side-
by-side deployment, which meant that customers who had already started
the purchase process got the free e-book, but other customers did not.
Several months later, a regulatory change required every customer
to accept new terms and conditions. Contoso developers used
Visual Studio to deploy an updated version of the workflow that
included the new step. They chose to upgrade running workflows to
ensure that every customer accepted the terms and conditions.
</SCENARIO IN PRACTICE>
97

Use Full-Duplex Communications
Services are often developed to WS-* standards, and operations are usually
implemented by using request-response messaging in which the consumer
always initiates transactions. There is, however, growing demand for full-duplex
communication, where either the consumer or the service may control the transfer
of data. Visual Studio and the WCF Web API include support for developing
duplex services exposed over HTTP by using the new WebSockets standard.
Developers can use the WCF Web API to create Representational State Transfer
(REST) services that provide real-time services to clients on virtually any platform.
Deploy Services Quickly
Visual Studio 2012 also makes deploying and consuming WCF services
easier. Default project configurations have been updated with
smart defaults that often are suitable for deployment to production
with no or minimal changes. If the developer needs to edit the
configuration, the editor now includes better IntelliSense and improved
validation to help ensure configurations are created correctly.
To protect a service, the service can now inherit settings directly
from IIS. This feature enables configuring security for the service
only once, including HTTPS and authentication, and the service
automatically uses these settings with no additional configuration.
For consuming applications, WCF publishes the service metadata as a single
WSDL document, making the service easier to consume. Developers can choose
to use lightweight messaging by using SOAP over UDP, according to their needs.
98

Summary
Customers expect web applications to look great on any platform. They
should be functional and fast. Web developers can help to ensure the
applications they develop are responsive, fully featured, and attractive by
developing for the latest standards. Web services enable developers to
expose business logic that developers can integrate with web applications
across platforms and devices. Visual Studio 2012 includes all of the tools
necessary for web developers to create applications that conform to the
appropriate standards, meet user expectations, and function perfectly. From
initial planning through development, testing, and deployment, Visual Studio
2012 includes the tools to make creating web applications easier and faster.
Visual Studio 2012 also makes it easy to develop services to use in a
service-oriented architecture. Developers can easily create services
based on workflows and they can create asynchronous services, helping
to ensure that consuming applications remains responsive during
service calls. For services providing real-time information, developers
can implement full duplex services and exploit Web Sockets.
99

Microsoft®
Windows Azure™ provides a highly scalable and reliable hosting
infrastructure and toolset for applications and services running in cloud.
Windows Azure is an open platform and developers can choose to build
applications by using a variety of tools and web application frameworks with
programming languages such as Java or PHP. However, most developers are
likely to use Visual Studio 2012 as the development environment, to use C#,
Visual Basic or F# as the programming language, and to use the .NET Framework
to provide the runtime services. Developers working in this environment
will find that Visual Studio 2012 makes developing, deploying, and testing
applications and services for Windows Azure very easy. Additionally, the tooling
the Visual Studio 2012 provides enables development teams to implement
comprehensive diagnostics and tracing, while Visual Studio Team Foundation
Server support Azure development throughout the entire application lifecycle.
Developing for
the Cloud
100

Deploying an application in the cloud ensures that the application can scale as
the business grows. Windows Azure runs application instances, each of which is
a virtual server running in a datacenter managed by Microsoft. The infrastructure
provided by the datacenters helps to ensure balanced and responsive
performance. An administrator can choose the number of instances and the
volume of resources such as memory and computing power to allocate when
the application is deployed. As demand increases, an administrator can upgrade
an instance to have more resources or add additional instances. Microsoft also
provide utilities that enable an administrator to configure automatic scaling; this
feature can dynamically start further application instances during peak working
hours, and then stop surplus instances at off-peak times. Elastic scalability helps
to ensure that applications are responsive while still minimizing running costs.
Development teams wanting to upgrade to the latest Azure
1.7 SDK can do so on a developer by developer basis.
For detailed information on the architecture of applications that run by using
Windows Azure, visit the Introducing Windows Azure page at
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/fundamentals/intro-to-windows-azure/.
Azure Roles
An application deployed to Windows Azure runs as one or more roles.
A role is simply a collection of application files and configuration
information that is deployed as an application instance. A Windows
Azure solution contains one or more roles, and each role can be
configured and managed independently. Windows Azure supports
several different types of roles, and each type has a specific purpose.
101

Web Role
A Web role contains a web application or web service. Typically, a developer
uses a Web role to build the user interface for an application running in the
cloud. Web role instances in Windows Azure provide a dedicated Internet
Information Services (IIS) web server, making it easy to create applications
by using popular web technologies such as ASP.NET (including ASP.NET
MVC), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), PHP, and Node.js.
Worker Role
A Worker role is a general purpose container for running custom code for a
web application or service. Worker role instances typically run asynchronous,
long-running, or perpetual tasks independent of user interaction or input. Most
Azure solutions separate the background processing of an application into a
Worker role and run the front-end in a Web role to better distribute application
logic and improve control over how the application scales. Azure provides
communication mechanisms in the form of queues and structured storage,
controlled by the Azure Storage Service, to enable Web and Worker roles to
share data. By default, the code in a Worker role will execute by using IIS as
the application server, but Worker roles can be built by using other application
platforms, including Apache™ Tomcat®
and the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).
Windows Azure instances in Web and Worker roles are
automatically maintained and managed by Microsoft staff with no
involvement required by the developer or IT department.
102

Cache Role
FPerformance is important for many applications. One way to improve
the performance of an application is to store application data in a high-
speed, in-memory cache. Windows Azure Caching (Preview) supports
the ability to host caching services on Windows Azure roles. There are
Remote Clients
Web Role
Worker Role
Worker Role
Worker Role
Message
Queue
Load Balancer
Data Center
Web Role
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two main deployment topologies for caching (preview): co-located and
dedicated. Co-located roles also host other non-caching application
code and services. Dedicated roles are only used for caching.
Visual Studio 2012 enables you to configure Windows Azure Caching (Preview)
for your cloud service. For more information on Windows Azure Caching
(Preview), see the Overview of Windows Azure Caching (Preview) page at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/hh914161.aspx.
Virtual Machine Role
Not all applications are suitable for structuring as a Web or Worker role. For
example, an organization may have an existing application that they simply
wish to run in the cloud, or that may require significant customization of
the machine on which it is running, possibly including the installation of a
variety of dependent software components. The Virtual Machine (VM) role is
designed for such scenarios. A VM role is a custom Windows Server 2008 R2
image running in a datacenter. Using a VM role, a developer can prepare a
custom virtual machine image containing the applications and any dependent
software, and then upload this virtual machine image to an Azure datacenter.
A VM role is ideal for hosting stateless compute-intensive applications. Code
running in a VM role can store and access resources such as files, databases
and message queues held on-premises within an organization by using Azure
Connect to establish a secure virtual network connection. Azure Connect is
described in more detail on the Overview of Windows Azure Connect page
at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/gg432997.aspx.
104

Alternatively, it can employ SQL Database if it needs to store
and maintain structured information in a database.
For more information about Azure roles, visit the Overview of
Creating a Hosted Service for Windows Azure page at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/gg432976.aspx.
Windows Azure
SQL Database
On-Premises Infrastructure
Database Message Queue
Remote Client
AzureConnect
Datacenter
VM Role
Files
105

Azure Stateful Virtual Machines
VM roles are stateless, enabling them to be stopped and restarted automatically
by the datacenter in which they are running without losing data. However,
Azure now also supports completely customizable, stateful virtual machines. A
developer has full control over the configuration and installation of the software,
but application state and other data can be maintained in a persistent manner
on the virtual machine. The developer’s organization takes on the responsibility
for monitoring the health of a virtual machine deployed in this manner, and for
maintaining the state information held by each virtual machine. For more detailed
information on Windows Azure virtual machines, visit the Virtual Machines page
at, http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/scenarios/virtual-machines/
Azure Storage
Each Windows Azure instance runs in a virtual machine located in a datacenter
managed by Microsoft. However, these virtual machines are dynamic, and
they can be stopped and restarted at any time. Consequently, any data
stored in memory or on disk in the virtual machine is volatile. Windows Azure
provides Azure Storage for holding non-transient data. This data can be held
in a variety for formats; Azure provides table storage for holding structured
data, blob storage that can contain large objects such as video and audio
data, and queue storage for passing small messages between roles.
Azure Storage enables an application to store non-transient structured
data and access it from any instance of a role. It is accessed through the
Azure Storage Service provided by the Azure platform, and implements
a secure, scalable, highly available and easily accessible storage space.
The Azure Storage Service also supports NTFS emulation, enabling an
application to use blob storage as a virtual disk drive in the cloud.
106

Visual Studio 2012 makes using Windows Azure Storage easy. Where previously it
was necessary to manually create storage accounts by using the Windows Azure
online portal, a developer can now complete this task completely within Visual
Studio. This saves time and simplifies the workflow for developing a Windows
Azure application.
For more detailed information on Azure Storage, visit the Using
the Windows Azure Storage Services page at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee924681.
Coding for Azure
Developers building applications for Windows Azure use the Windows Azure
SDK for .NET. This SDK integrates into the Visual Studio 2012 IDE, and includes
a collection of templates, tools, and other utilities that enable a developer
using Visual Studio 2012 to implement the code for Web and Worker roles. A
developer can specify default configuration settings, and test and debug the
application locally by using the Azure Emulator. The emulator simulates the
way in which Web and Worker roles run in the cloud, and enable a developer
to take full advantage of the comprehensive debugging features of Visual
Studio 2012. In fact, building and testing a Web or Worker role is very similar
to creating an ordinary web application, and developers can leverage their
existing skills to develop applications for Windows Azure. For more information
about the Azure SDK and the features that it includes for use with Visual
Studio 2012, visit the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio page
at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee405484.aspx.
107

A developer creates a new cloud application by selecting
the Windows Azure Project template:
This template runs a wizard that enables the developer to select the roles
to be implemented by the cloud application. Notice that Web roles can
be constructed by using a variety of technologies. It is also possible to
implement multiple Web and Worker roles in the same cloud application and
these roles can be developed by using different programming languages.
108

A cloud solution contains separate projects for each role, together with a project
that defines the configuration of the solution. The configuration project provides
wizards that enable the developer to add further roles to the project.
The Roles folder enables a developer to quickly configure each role in
a cloud solution, specifying the volume of resources that the role has
access to when it is deployed, the number of instances of the role to
deploy, and the account keys to use for accessing Azure Storage.
109

The Configuration screen also enables a developer to specify items such as role-
settings, and the URLs of endpoints that the cloud application should expose.
For further information about using Visual Studio 2012 to configure cloud
application, visit the Configuring a Windows Azure Project page at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee405486.aspx.
For development and testing purposes, a developer can deploy and debug
roles locally on the development machine. The Windows Azure SDK includes
a collection of tools and services that can emulate the cloud environment,
including simulated Web and Worker roles, and local service that mimics
the features of Azure Storage. A developer can use this environment
for fast and easy, feature testing and then hand the project over to an
administrator when testing is complete for deployment to the cloud.
110

The Server Explorer in Visual Studio 2012 also provides access to local
Azure Storage, as well as the Azure Storage Service in the cloud if the
developer has the appropriate access keys. A developer can use this utility
to quickly examine the contents of Azure Storage and verify that code
running in the Web and Worker roles is storing the expected information.
111

Windows Azure SQL Database
Many applications use databases to store related data. Windows Azure SQL
Database is the cloud-based database that forms part of the Windows Azure
platform. An administrator can easily provision SQL Database databases from
the Windows Azure web portal. SQL Database is fully scalable, is reliable, and
is familiar to developers who have used SQL Server. For development purposes,
Visual Studio 2012 includes Local DB, a lightweight database engine that makes it
easier to build data-driven applications. Local DB has full fidelity to SQL Database
databases. Developers can create an application with confidence that it works
correctly when they deploy the application to the Windows Azure platform.
Once the application logic for a cloud application has been
completed and tested locally, and administrator can reconfigure the
application to connect to the live SQL Database in the cloud.
112

Using Server Explorer in Visual Studio 2012, a developer with the appropriate
access rights can connect directly to SQL Azure in the cloud to view data.
For more information about Windows Azure SQL Database, visit
the Introducing Windows Azure SQL Database page at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee336230.aspx.
Publishing to the Cloud
An administrator packaging and deploying an Azure application can use the
same Configuration wizard available to a developer. An administrator can
modify any of the configuration settings, and specify the necessary access
keys and endpoints for the solution, and also configure features such as
Remote Desktop, which enables an administrator to connect directly to the
113

virtual machines running the various roles in the cloud. An administrator
can also enable and configure IntelliTrace®
, enabling support staff to debug
issues that may occur while the application is running in the cloud.
The Configuration wizard converts the various
settings into a set of XML files that define the
configuration for each service implemented by
the Web and Worker roles, together with the
endpoint and connectivity configuration for
each service. The Package wizard enables an
administrator to build an installable package for
the solution, including the executable code and
the configuration information. An administrator
can also enable and configure a remote desktop
connection for the solution, enabling direct
access to each role instance when it is running.
This is useful for monitoring purposes.
114

After the package has been generated, the administrator can log into
the Azure account for the organization, and upload the package to
service in the cloud by using the Azure Management Portal.
The Publish Windows Azure Application
wizard combines the packaging and
deployment phases, enabling an administrator
to perform both tasks directly from Visual
Studio 2012. This wizard prompts the user
for the details of the Azure account and the
cloud service to use, before building and
deploying the application to this service.
Note that the account details can be saved locally, to prevent an administrator
from having to enter them repeatedly when deploying or reconfiguring services.
115

The wizard performs consistency checking to verify that the configuration
is valid and to minimize the possibility of failure due to configuration errors
when the application runs in the cloud.
As an application is published and deployed, the activity log in Visual Studio 2012
displays the deployment progress and the initialization status of virtual machines.
Most applications evolve as business requirements change or customer
demand varies. Visual Studio 2012 makes updating applications easy
with in-place updates. Updates can be made to code and to many
configuration settings without taking the deployed solution offline.
To update the configuration settings, an administrator can simply
make the necessary changes in the configuration files and use the
publish wizard to re-publish the application. Visual Studio 2012 and the
Windows Azure platform perform an in-place update automatically.
For more information about using Visual Studio to publish and
deploy a cloud application, see the Publishing Windows Azure
Applications to Windows Azure from Visual Studio page at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee460772.asp
116

Building Hybrid Cloud Solutions
with Windows Azure
A hybrid cloud solution consists of a combination of application elements,
some of which run on-premises within an organization, while other components
are located in the cloud. Building a hybrid cloud solutions is easy with
Visual Studio 2012 and the Windows Azure SDK for .NET. Using the tools
provided by Visual Studio and the Azure SDK, a developer can create new
web applications and services, or adapt existing applications and services
for the cloud. The key issues are those associated with connecting the
various components in a reliable and highly secure fashion. Windows Azure
provides a collection of technologies aimed at optimizing communications
and data access in a cloud application. These technologies include:
• The Windows Azure Service Bus, which offers scalable cloud-based
message queuing. More information about the Service
Bus is available on the Messanging page at
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/features/messaging/
• The Azure Relay Service, for protecting and optimizing connections
between services running in the cloud or on an on-premises server
and remote client applications. This is part of the Azure Service Bus
designed specifically for supporting services hosted in the
cloud. For more information about this feature, see the Windows Azure
AppFabric: An Introduction to Service Bus Relay page at
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/showcase/details.aspx?uuid=39593
0db-6622-4a9f-8152-e0cb1fc5149c
• The Access Control Service which enables an organization to
implement claims-based authentication, integrating the facilities
of common authentication providers such as Windows Live, Google,
and Facebook, into their own solutions, or to implement a federated
security mechanism that incorporates the security services of partner
organizations, For more information, visit the Access Control Service 2.0
page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/gg429786.aspx.
117

• In-role caching, which provides a reliable mechanism for enabling an
application to retain frequently used data in-memory in the virtual
machine in which it is running, reducing the network latency that
commonly occurs when connecting to services running across
the Internet. The Service Bus also provides a separate caching
service that enables multiple role instances to cache shared data
locally in the same datacenter. The Caching in Windows Azure
page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/
gg278356.aspx provides more information
about the Azure Caching service.
For more information about building hybrid cloud applications and
the features that Service Bus provides, visit the Building Hybrid
Solutions with Windows Azure page at
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/fundamentals/hybrid-solutions/.
Datacenter
On-premises Applications
and Services
Service Bus
Message
Queue
Access
Control
Service
Remote Client
AzureConnect
Worker Role
Windows
Azure Cache
Web Role
(WCF Web Service)
Relay
Service
118

Profiling and Tracing Web Applications
and Services in the Cloud
When building web applications for the cloud, or when integrating existing
on-premises applications with cloud-based services, new challenges
arise. Characteristics such as network latency and resource constraints
can cause unexpected performance issues. Visual Studio 2012 includes
profiling tools that developers can use to identify the possible causes of
poor performance. An administrator or developer can enable profiling
of selected parts of an application, and the Windows Azure platform can
capture and store this profiling information. Developers can download this
data and analyze it by using the profiling tools in Visual Studio 2012.
An administrator can configure IntelliTrace for cloud applications and services,
enabling a cloud application to capture and record debugging information that
can be downloaded and replayed inside Visual Studio 2012. Using IntelliTrace
enables a developer to shorten the debugging cycle, and also to capture errors
and trace events caused by circumstances that are difficult to reproduce locally.
119

Enabling Continuous
Delivery in the Cloud
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server running on-premises can integrate
with Azure SDK tools and Microsoft PowerShell scripts to implement a
tight feedback loop between the project team building cloud services
and the customers that use them. A developer can modify code to add
new features or fix bugs and check the code in to the Team Foundation
SErver (TFS) repository. TFS can execute a continuous build process to
detect new versions of source files, rebuild the solution, and deliver a new
version of the application for testing and deployment to the cloud.
The same process also works with Visual Studio Team Foundation Service,
enabling a project team to manage its operations in the cloud and deploy
applications to the cloud. For more information about Team Foundation
Service, visit the Team Foundation Service page at http://tfspreview.com/.
120

Building and Deploying
Applications to the Cloud by
Using Visual Studio LightSwitch
Visual Studio LightSwitch gives end-user developers a fast and
simple toolset for building high-quality, data-driven, line-of-business
applications. It is available as a separate, standalone product but the
LightSwitch templates are also integrated into Visual Studio 2012.
These templates enable a developer to be productive immediately by
providing a collection of pre-configured screen templates that implement
the common application logic required by most business applications.
121

These screens can be connected to a variety of data sources such as
a database located locally or in the cloud, a Microsoft SharePoint®
site, an Open Data Protocol (OData) Service, or a WCF service.
122

Visual Studio 2012 provides Wizards for each of the data sources.
For example, the OData Service wizard prompts the developer for
the service endpoint to connect to and the credentials to use.
Subsequent pages in the wizard enable the developer to select the entities
to use from this endpoint. Visual Studio 2012 generates code that connects
to this endpoint and retrieves the data, returning it as a set of custom types.
A developer can customize the data source and include additional code and
queries to modify the way in which the data is presented and updated.
The built in functionality generated for a screen includes default logic
for adding new data items to a data source, searching through data, and
displaying the details of data items in list or grid form. Screens can be linked
to enable a user to drill down through data, displaying information related to
selected items. A developer can easily customize screens and the navigation
paths between them to meet the exact requirements of the application.
123

The extensibility features of LightSwitch enable developers to build
and apply custom shells and themes to applications, enabling them to
blend in with the look and feel of existing corporate applications. With
Visual Studio 2012, LightSwitch includes the new Cosmopolitan shell and
theme, which provide a more immersive feel, simple and clean control
styling, inclusion of branding, and better use of screen space.
124

A developer can also modify the code behind any screen to include the
appropriate business logic to be performed when the user queries or edits
data. For more information about building applications with Visual Studio
LightSwitch, visit the Quickly Build Business Applications page at
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/lightswitch/overview/build-quickly.
A LightSwitch application can be deployed as a local desktop application on each
user’s machine, but a more common scenario is to publish the application to a
web server and enable users to connect to it from a browser. The application
can be run by using an instance of IIS located within the organization, or it
can be published to Azure. Also, users have the option to only deploy the
OData service created by LightSwitch, and not the client application.
The LightSwitch Publish Application wizard enables an administrator
to configure the application and to upload it directly to Azure.
125

A LightSwitch application actually comprises two principle areas of functionality:
data sources and screens. When an administrator publishes a LightSwitch
application the data sources are deployed as data services, while the screens
are packaged within a Microsoft Silverlight®
component that can be run in a
web browser. With Visual Studio 2012, an administrator can elect to perform
service-only publication, in which case only the data sources are packaged
and deployed as an OData feed, with separate endpoints for each data
source. Client applications built by using other languages and technologies
can connect to this feed and consume the data from each source.
126

Summary
Windows Azure provides a comprehensive platform for hosting applications
in the cloud. Windows Azure is secure, scalable, and reliable making it the
perfect platform to host applications without the added effort and cost of
managing servers. An organization can use Visual Studio 2012 to easily create,
publish, manage, and update applications in Windows Azure while minimizing
the downtime of these applications. Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
provides extended facilities for project teams, enabling them to respond
rapidly to user requests by implementing a continuous delivery process.
By using Visual Studio 2012 with the Windows Azure SDK for .NET, developers
can build, test, and debug cloud applications by using a local emulator. This
strategy helps to identify any application-specific errors that may be present,
before deploying the application to the cloud. Additionally, the monitoring and
logging capabilities of Azure, together with the IntelliTrace features of Visual
Studio 2012, enable administrators and developers to capture performance
and other trace data, and to analyze this information to identify the causes
of any bottlenecks in the system. The Windows Azure page at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd163896.aspx provides more information
on using Azure to design and implement cloud-based applications and services.
Visual Studio LightSwitch provides a fast and convenient way to build and
deploy data-driven line-of-business applications. These applications can also be
deployed and tested locally, while the deployment wizard in LightSwitch enables
an administrator to quickly package an application and upload it to the cloud.
127

Collaboration is a key factor in the success of effective organizations, whether
this collaboration is between individual employees working as part of a small
team, between departments needing to liaise and coordinate with each other,
or between separate organizations acting as partners to achieve a common
goal. In this environment, the ability to share information quickly and more
securely is paramount. Microsoft Windows SharePoint®
helps you to build
solutions that can accomplish these aims. By using Windows SharePoint,
you can build custom web sites for your organization that help you share
information and cooperate with your colleagues and business partners.
Developing for
SharePoint
128

Visual Studio 2012 makes it easy to implement SharePoint solutions. The IDE it
incorporates significant performance and reliability improvements over earlier
versions of Visual Studio that are designed to help developers get SharePoint
sites up and running quickly. Specifically, Visual Studio 2012 provides:
• Updated project templates and design tools
to help accelerate project development.
• Enhanced support for and integration with SharePoint content
types and other SharePoint elements, within the Visual Studio IDE.
• Easier deployment to remote SharePoint servers.
• Full support for performance profiling.
• Unit testing your code and mocking SharePoint components
by using the Microsoft Fakes framework.
• Full support for JavaScript components when building SharePoint sites.
Accelerate SharePoint Site Development
Visual Studio 2012 includes simplified SharePoint project and item
templates, together with a comprehensive collection of code samples that
are closely matched to the business problems that users typically need to
address. These new templates and samples enable developers to swiftly
design and implement SharePoint sites that meet users’ requirements.
129

The SharePoint 2010 Project template provides a clean starting point for
developing a new SharePoint application. A developer can quickly add an
extensive collection of items such as Web Parts, lists, site columns, user-
defined content types, modules, and pages to a SharePoint application
by using the item templates provided with Visual Studio 2012.
130

Most item templates provide designers and wizards, enabling a developer
to concentrate on the functionality of the solution rather than being
concerned about the format of the XML markup contained in the various
SharePoint content and configuration files. The most commonly used
items in a SharePoint site are Site Columns, Lists, and Content Types.
A Site Column represents an abstract data type displayed by a page in a
SharePoint application, such as a telephone number, a comment, or the
city name of a contact in a contact list. The Site Column wizard in Visual
Studio 2012 makes it simple to define new site columns, providing a visual
designer that generates the appropriate XML code for the Elements.xml
file. For more information about Site Columns, visit the Introduction to
Columns page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms450825.aspx.
The new List Designer in Visual Studio 2012 enables developers to more easily
define lists, and to specify the columns and views that appear on a SharePoint
page. Again, this wizard automatically generates the XML markup for the list. The
items in a list can be subject to custom validation rules to ensure that a user only
enters valid data. For more information about defining and using lists, visit the
List Forms page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa543232.aspx and
the List Views page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff604021.aspx.
131

A Content Type represents a collection of resources. For example, a content
type could contain contact information used by a contacts lists, or task
information referenced by a task list. A developer can reuse the same
content type in different lists and document libraries in a SharePoint site.
The Content Type designer in Visual Studio 2012 provides a visual tool
for implementing content types. For more information, visit the Content
Types page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms479905.aspx.
For a full list of the SharePoint templates supplied with Visual Studio
2012, see the SharePoint Project and Project Item Templates page at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee231554(v=vs.110).aspx.
132

Easily Incorporate Silverlight Web
Parts into SharePoint Sites
Using SharePoint Web Parts, a developer can build components that users
can configure to customize the functionality, appearance, and behavior
of their SharePoint pages. Visual Studio 2012 provides a fully integrated
environment for creating, designing, packaging, deploying, and debugging
Web Parts. Developers can lay out the user interface and implement the
functionality behind the elements in this Web Part. Developers can create
ASP .NET Web Parts, HTML and JavaScript Web Parts, or Silverlight Web Parts.
The Designer window in Visual Studio 2012 enables a designer to visualize
the appearance of the Web Part and add controls from the toolbox.
The Designer window in Visual Studio 2012 enables a designer to visualize
the appearance of the Web Part using the controls provided in the Toolbox:
133

For detailed information about building Web Parts with Visual Studio
2012, visit the Creating Web Parts for SharePoint page at
134

Quickly Reuse Items from
Existing SharePoint Sites
If an organization has existing SharePoint 2010 sites, a developer can import
all or part of this site into Visual Studio 2012 by using the Import SharePoint
2010 Solution Package project. The project runs a wizard that prompts
the developer for the location of the existing solution package file. The
developer can then specify the items in this package to be imported.
The developer can customize the imported items and then redeploy them.
Similarly, the Import Reusable SharePoint 2010 Workflow template
enables a developer to import and tailor a declarative workflow
created previously by using SharePoint Designer 2010. The developer
can deploy the modified workflow to a SharePoint site.
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For more information, visit the Importing Items from an Existing SharePoint Site
page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee231584(v=vs.110).aspx.
Access Resources Held on a Local
SharePoint Server at Design Time
At design time, earlier versions of the Visual Studio IDE did not resolve
references to some resources that were located on a local SharePoint
server but that were outside the scope of your solution. These references
were only resolved at runtime. This meant that useful design-time features
such as IntelliSense for JavaScript files located on a local SharePoint
server were unavailable, and the Design View window was unable to
correctly display image files located on the local SharePoint server.
Visual Studio 2012 changes the way in which it handles references to these items.
Visual Studio 2012 now provides IntelliSense for JavaScript files deployed to the
SharePoint server, and correctly displays images in the Design View window.
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These enhancements improve the development experience and increase
confidence that a SharePoint site will function as expected when it is deployed.
Optimizingand ProfilingSharePoint Code
SharePoint solutions can contain a variety of items, including Web Parts,
lists, event receivers, and other items. Optimizing a complex mixture of
these elements to ensure that they provide the best performance can
also be a challenging task. Visual Studio 2012 includes features that can
assist a developer in pinpointing the items in a SharePoint solution that
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may require attention. Specifically, Visual Studio 2012 enables a developer
to perform sampling, instrumentation, and tier integration profiling
of SharePoint code by using the SharePoint Performance wizard.
Unit Testing Your Code and Mocking
SharePoint Components
It is also important to thoroughly test the elements of a
SharePoint site before making it publicly available.
Testing SharePoint code often requires assemblies provided on the SharePoint
server by the SharePoint runtime. This can make isolated unit testing difficult.
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Visual Studio 2012 includes the new Microsoft Fakes feature that makes it easy
for you to test your SharePoint code without requiring a SharePoint server.
Developers can use the Microsoft Fakes feature to create fake versions of
SharePoint runtime assemblies that are then used with unit tests. Developers
have full control over which assemblies they want to create fake versions
of: Simply right-click an assembly and then click Add Fakes Assembly.
The
Microsoft Fakes feature in Visual Studio
2012 ensures that unit tests that rely on
the SharePoint runtime, for example, code
that uses an instance of the SPContext
object, run correctly. Developers can
run the unit tests for their SharePoint
application, step through their code and
see the calls from the code to the fake
SharePoint objects. No code changes
are necessary when you migrate your
solution to a SharePoint server.
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Quickly Deploy SharePoint Solutions
It just takes a couple of clicks in Visual Studio 2012 for you to publish SharePoint
solutions and deploy them to a remote SharePoint server. This is a substantial
improvement over the process implemented by earlier versions of Visual Studio.
An administrator can quickly upload a SharePoint solution to a
SharePoint server, and a developer can also quickly package and
deploy a solution locally for further development and testing.
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Summary
SharePoint offers a platform for building web sites that enable employees and
partner organizations to collaborate, and to share applications and data in
a safer and more secure manner. Visual Studio 2012 includes a collection of
tools, templates, and wizards that make it easy for developers to design and
implement highly functional SharePoint sites. Additionally, the testing and
optimization facilities in Visual Studio 2012 help to ensure that SharePoint
sites function correctly and efficiently, while the deployment wizard enables
an administrator to package a SharePoint site and upload it to a web server.
For a complete list of the new features provided by Visual Studio
2012 for developing SharePoint solutions, visit the What’s New
for SharePoint Development in Visual Studio 2012 page at
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With great software increasingly defining the ability of many businesses
to compete and succeed, more attention is being paid to making
software deliver on business value. To do this, businesses must take
into account the whole life cycle of software, from the moment it is
conceived to when it is deployed and eventually retired.
Application Life
Cycle Management
with Visual Studio 2012
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Designing and constructing a modern application frequently involves the
efforts of a range of participants with specific skills: the customers and business
owners who derive value from the software, project managers who make sure
the process meshes with other business deliverables, designers who create
captivating user interfaces, developers who implement efficient business logic,
testers who thoroughly test the application in a timely and comprehensive
manner, and operations personnel who deploy and maintain the application.
The expanded Application Life Cycle Management capabilities of Visual Studio
2012 enable even more stakeholders, including developers, to take advantage
of their skills to build-high quality solutions focused on business value.
Visual Studio simplifies the interactions among team members and roles by
streamlining the flow of information across the team. Microsoft Visual Studio
Team Foundation Server 2012 acts as the central repository and integration
hub that brings together tools, processes, and project artifacts to simplify
the in-context collaboration of team members across functional disciplines
and platforms. By providing an extensible and open connector model, Team
Foundation Server ensures that over time, more and more stakeholders can
closely collaborate with the development team to deliver value. With Team
Foundation Server, teams have the freedom to choose which development
process to adopt or customize; they can get started with a number of proven
development methodologies, including a new Agile process template.
Teams often use many different tools and platforms to deliver successful
solutions. By standardizing on a single integrated infrastructure, development
teams that use a range of platforms and tools can improve collaboration
and reduce operational costs. Team Foundation Server enables members
of diverse development teams to focus on a single, integrated view of the
development process, regardless of the platform they are targeting or using
for development. Visual Studio Team Foundation Server works seamlessly
with familiar client tools such as Visual Studio, Microsoft Test Manager, and
Visual Studio Team Explorer. With Team Explorer Everywhere, Team Foundation
Server seamlessly integrates team members who are using IDEs based on
Eclipse™. Customers and business stakeholders can use simple tools such as
Microsoft Excel® and PowerPoint®. Integration with Microsoft Project Server
enables project managers to gain insight into the health of ongoing projects,
understand how they support business needs, and help identify ways to
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improve existing processes. In short, team members can focus on delivering
value for customers rather than transitioning information between roles.
With Visual Studio Team Foundation Service, Microsoft has combined
the power of Team Foundation Server with the simplicity and efficiency
of the cloud. Team Foundation Service is built on the high availability
and scalability of the Windows Azure™ platform and Windows SQL
Database. Teams of all sizes can be up and running in very little time
and are free to focus on delivering great software that delights their
customers, while leaving the infrastructure management to Microsoft.
The Benefits of Visual Studio 2012 and
Team Foundation Server 2012
For all but the most trivial of solutions, application development is a
multidisciplinary exercise that encompasses a wide variety of tasks and
participants. The principal aim of any software development effort is to deliver
a quality application that meets the customers’ requirements in a timely and
cost-effective manner. However, there are many obstacles that can get in the
way of any development team. Many of the problems are caused by a lack of
clear and effective communication among developers, project managers, and
customers. Other problems may result from a lack of discipline that occurs when
developers and project managers misuse or misunderstand the development
process. Consequently, adaptable and easy-to-use tooling is critical to help
overcome the issues that can arise when producing a potentially complex system.
Visual Studio 2012 and Team Foundation Server help to address these
concerns by supplying a collection of tightly integrated tools to support
and manage the entire application life cycle. The primary aims of Visual
Studio 2012 and Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 are to:
• Prioritize collaboration among everyone involved in developing an
application, incorporating customers as
equal members of the development team.
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• Deliver timely and actionable feedback to
reduce wasted effort and its associated costs.
• Provide natural and appropriate tools for the tasks involved in
designing, developing, testing, delivering,
and maintaining quality software.
• Support best practices for application development,
while remaining independent of any specific methodology.
Collaboration and communication are essential elements in any successful
software project. Earlier versions of Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
focused on ensuring that developers and project managers had the tools
and information that they needed to build and track the development of
a project. However, your customers are a fundamentally important part
of the team; if you do not deliver what they want, your efforts are wasted.
In this release, we have extended the functionality in Visual Studio Team
Foundation Server and provided additional features to enable developers and
customers to work together more closely. These tools will help to close the
communications gap by enabling customers to express their requirements
more succinctly and to provide more effective and focused feedback.
Increasing Efficiency and
Reducing Waste
Traditional waterfall development approaches take the view that it is necessary
to fully understand the users’ requirements before attempting to design or
build software. Although this approach is widely used and extremely valuable,
it is sometimes difficult to react to user requirements that may change swiftly.
Some of these modifications may be due in part to changes in the business
environment, and others may be a result of misunderstandings that are
caused by the differences between the lay vocabulary of the users and the
technical vocabulary of the analysts and developers. Whatever the causes of
change, the sooner that you can react, the less costly will be the impact.
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Agile methodologies seek to address and accommodate change, primarily
by breaking a large project down into smaller chunks, but many of the
same issues can still arise, albeit earlier on and on a smaller scale. The basic
problem remains: Users must be able to express their requirements in a clear,
concise, and unambiguous manner that can be understood by the developers.
Customers’ expectations may also grow unreasonably and quickly. For example,
as technology advances, users frequently assume that any solution can easily
include the latest and most desirable features. Technological advances frequently
lead to more diverse solutions, and failure to understand this complexity—or
the context in which it is best applied—can also cause much wasted effort.
Including Customers in the Development Workflow
A key part of successful application development is to listen to what
customers say and to build what they want. To assist with understanding and
documenting users’ requirements, Visual Studio 2012 provides storyboarding
tools that enable the development team to discuss and visualize requirements
with users and to understand how users expect to use the application. The
storyboard can be saved to Microsoft SharePoint and linked to Visual Studio
Team Foundation Server 2012 work items to provide context for developers.
In an Agile environment, developers must quickly demonstrate the results of their
labors and obtain feedback from users, again in a clear, concise, manner. Visual
Studio 2012 provides tools that enable a stakeholder to review the software and
provide actionable feedback. The team can generate the appropriate tasks to deal
with this feedback, plan for their implementation, and allocate the corresponding
work to the appropriate members of the team. The feedback is stored in the
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 database and is available to the
developers who are responsible for incorporating any required changes.
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Working in a Familiar Environment
Another common source of waste is the tools themselves. Developers forced
to use unfamiliar tools require time to learn how to use the tools properly.
Additionally, developers cannot be efficient if they must use tools that do not
fit into their team’s development methodology. Team Explorer integrates the
features that Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 provides into Visual
Studio 2012 in a natural manner, enabling developers to perform their tasks
in a familiar environment. Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 and
Visual Studio 2012 do not mandate that you follow any specific development
methodology: You can use them with the development approach with which
your organization is most comfortable, whether it is Scrum, Agile, or a more
formal method such as the Capability Maturity Model Integration®.
Developers and project managers must communicate effectively with other
team members who are working on the same project, and cooperating members
should ideally have the same understanding of the solution and share the same
priorities. Visual Studio 2012 enables developers and project managers to
provide context as they communicate with each other, helping to ensure that
they all have the same, complete understanding of the tasks on which they are
working and how they fit together. Additionally, Visual Studio 2012 provides a
live view of project status, ensuring that all participants are kept up to date.
Stakeholder Gives Feedback
Feedback
Incorporated
Daily Cycles
Run
a Sprint
Plan
a Sprint
Manage the
Backlog
Tell the
story
Ask for
Feedback
Deploy to
Stakeholders
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Managing the Life Cycle of a Modern Application
Modern software should be viewed as a living asset, with a life cycle that spans
the activities that represent the entire lifetime of the product, from identification
of business requirements, through development, testing, deployment, support,
and maintenance, right up to the eventual retirement of the application.
Consequently, the application life cycle management toolset that you employ
must be able to handle the development, testing, and deployment aspects of
an application and be flexible enough to manage and incorporate feedback
from operations staff. As the software is used, bugs are often discovered. So the
toolset must provide facilities for recording issues, to enable the development
team to resolve them, and to provide the operations staff with the information
that they require to roll out the fixes. This interaction implies an inherent
connection between the processes that the development team performs when
it builds and maintains the software, and those that the operations team uses to
manage the software when it is deployed. Development and operations personnel
must collaborate effectively because there is potential for bottlenecks to occur
that will lead to delays and inefficiencies wherever handoffs between the two
teams exist, especially when there is scope for miscommunication between them.
Visual Studio 2012 helps to align development with operations into a seamless
workflow, reducing potential churn. For example, a common situation is that the
operations team reports a bug in the live software that the development team is
unable to reproduce outside the production environment. To help with situations
such as this, Microsoft IntelliTrace® has been extended to support the production
environment. By using Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012, the operations
team can record and capture the sequence of events that caused the bug and
to store the trace information, together with the appropriate environmental
data. The operations team can then hand this information, together with any
other observations, to the development team for analysis and triage. Following
an Agile approach, the project manager can subsequently create an appropriate
work item and allocate it to a developer. This workflow helps to accelerate
communications between the development and operations teams, ensuring that
bugs are resolved and that updated software is deployed in a timely manner.
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Features in Visual Studio 2012
Visual Studio 2012 builds on the features of earlier versions, integrating with
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 to implement a data store that
houses the details of the tasks to be performed (the backlog) for the entire
development team. This new implementation of Visual Studio retains the
facilities of earlier versions, such as tools to support a highly customizable
development process, integrated check-in and check-out facilities, and
automated real-time reporting. It also includes workflows that actively
incorporate the activities of the test team into the application life cycle, thereby
improving the quality assurance processes of the development effort.
We have updated the planning tools to provide transparency across the
planning process and to enable the full participation of the development
team. These tools scale as required, and you can apply them to match
your organization’s development processes and best practices.
REQUIREMENTS
Implement
Define
Ideation
Develop
Idea to working
software
Operate
Working software in production
Value realization
Measure
Actionable learning
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With Visual Studio 2012, we have included new tools that improve the interaction
with the key stakeholders of any project— the users. We provide features
that fully integrate users into the development workflow, enabling them to
participate in the design of an application and to provide clear and actionable
feedback for the solution. As mentioned previously, we have also improved
the support for operations staff who act as the users’ advocates when the
solution has been deployed; they can provide comprehensive information
about bugs and other features in the system that must be dealt with.
We have optimized the developer experience that Team Explorer
provides in Visual Studio 2012, freeing the development team from
many of the distractions that can occur when it is working on a complex
project and enabling the team to work more quickly and efficiently.
Finally, we have made testing a first-class citizen in the development
process by integrating the test cycle into the development workflow,
thereby enhancing the scope for automated and exploratory testing.
Managing a Project
We have implemented an enhanced web experience for Visual Studio Team
Foundation Server 2012. The Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012
Web Access application provides a rich experience that you can access by
using a web browser through a web portal. We have also implemented touch
controls to enable quick, natural interaction on touch-screen devices.
Note: The examples shown in this section are based on the Scrum process
template for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012. Visual Studio
Team Foundation Server 2012 is designed to be methodology-neutral.
We provide project templates for some common Agile methods that
you can import and adapt to your own requirements. Other templates
for different development processes are also available and, naturally,
you are free to develop and publish your own custom templates.
The Web Access application gives the stakeholders who may not have
access to Visual Studio 2012 an extremely easy way to interact with the
rest of the team. For example, users can view their work items.
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Users can query the source control database and view the check-in status of items.
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The Web Access application is an ideal tool for geographically dispersed
teams; all team members see the same views of the same data that is managed
by the same instance of Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012.
If you are following a Scrum process, and you have the Scrum template
installed, the Web Access application enables you to break a project
down into work items and then assign these work items to sprints in
the product backlog. Work items can include rich text and images to
provide additional information and helpful feedback to developers.
You can view the details of an individual sprint and edit it
to decompose the items it contains into tasks.
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The Web Access application also enables you to drag items and reorder
them if you need to reprioritize work. You can reassign items to different
sprints by simply dragging them onto a sprint in the leftmost pane.
You can click a backlog item to edit it, assign it to a team member,
set the priority, and specify the effort that is required.
<Edit Backlog Item.png>
You can quickly see how much work has been assigned to each team member
and how much capacity he or she has remaining. This feature enables you to
determine whether any member of the development team is overburdened.
If necessary, you can reallocate tasks to other team members to even out
the workload, or you can reschedule the backlog item to a later sprint.
The velocity chart incorporates historical data to display how much work the
team delivered in past iterations, based on the effort-loading of each item
in that iteration. You can then compare this figure to the total effort for the
current iteration to help ensure that the workload of an iteration is feasible.
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Of course, you can only assign work to team members if they are
available to work on the project. The capacity-planning view in the Web
Access application enables you to record and adjust the availability of
any team member, and to amend the team capacity accordingly.
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The task board enables you to manage the status of the various tasks that make
up the backlog items. For example, you can view which tasks are in progress, yet
to be started, and completed. As team members start and complete tasks, you
can perform drag-and-drop operations to move items around the task board,
so that you have a complete and up-to-date view of a project’s progress.
Another key feature of the task board is the set of workflow rules
that help to prevent accidental errors. For example, suppose that you
attempt to move a task from the Done column back to the In Progress
column without specifying the additional effort that is required to
complete the work? In this case, the task board highlights the error.
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You can edit the properties of the task to specify the remaining required effort.
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The default view of the task board shows all of the tasks for each of the
work items, but you can highlight a specific team member if you simply
need to see the tasks that are assigned to that developer. You can also
use the task board to reassign tasks among developers by using a drag-
and-drop operation to move tasks between the developers’ schedules.
In short, by using the Web Access application you can easily manage
the project, assess the capacity of the development team, prioritize
work, manage the dependencies and relationships among work items
and developers, monitor the status of the project, and generally
keep track of the project. The project data is live, and any changes
are reflected to developers who are using Visual Studio 2012.
Gathering User Requirements
The Storyboarding Tool is an add-in for PowerPoint that enables
a developer to work with a user to understand the business
requirements and to plan how the application should function.
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With this tool, you can quickly mock-up a user interface and create animations
that illustrate how the user expects to navigate through the application, show
sample data, simulate events, and generally get a feel for what the user wants.
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It is easy to collaborate with a group of users, too, by displaying the
storyboard through a projector and making live changes as users participate
in the discussion. You can also e-mail the storyboard to users and gather
their feedback offline; users simply use PowerPoint to view it.
The Storyboarding Tool provides a rich library of controls, but you
can also create custom shapes, import them into the storyboard
shape library, and share them with the rest of the team.
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Using the Storyboarding Tool helps to ensure that you fully understand your
users’ requirements, and it enables your users to portray their vision for the
application. All of this can happen very quickly, without requiring that you
write a single line of code or waste time generating expensive prototypes.
Improving Developer Productivity
A key aim of Visual Studio 2012 is to help improve developer productivity.
With this in mind, Visual Studio now includes a number of new capabilities.
These capabilities enable a developer to focus on the tasks that are necessary
to develop quality software, and they supply a quick and easy mechanism
for collaborating with other developers working on the same project.
Team Explorer
Team Explorer is the developer’s primary interface for interacting with Visual
Studio Team Foundation Server 2012. In Visual Studio 2012, we have changed
Team Explorer to provide a more organized user interface that simplifies
many of the tasks that team members perform. Team Explorer makes use
of asynchronous communications with Visual Studio Team Foundation
Server 2012 to retrieve and save data, resulting in shorter response times.
Team Explorer also provides a Web Access link that quickly launches the
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 Web Access application.
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The My Work pane lists the developer’s tasks and displays the status of these
tasks. It is the view that a typical developer will leave open much of the time.
Developers can double-click a task to get access to the details or to edit the task.
In addition, the View All link displays the details of the tasks in Visual Studio
2012 in a format that is similar to the one used by the Web Access application.
The integrated search feature helps a developer to quickly
locate project items and other information.
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Other panes in Team Explorer provide access to the other important
functions that a developer must perform and to the data that the
developer requires. For example, the Work Items pane provides
a broader view of all of the work items across the project.
The New Work Item link in this pane enables a developer to quickly
define additional work items and to add them to the project.
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Using the Pending Changes pane, a developer can check source code in
and out of the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 database. The
Pending Changes pane displays the context of the check-in operation,
enabling the developer to quickly verify that the correct files are saved
and to specify that the corresponding work item has been resolved.
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The Source Control Explorer window enables you to perform
check-in and check-out operations at the source-file level.
Shelvesets
If you are working on a complex piece of code, you may have files open in
several windows across multiple monitors, you may have various breakpoints
set in your code, you may have watch windows set up, and so on. In the
midst of all this, suppose that your project manager walks in and asks you
to put everything on hold and work on another urgent task that concerns a
different piece of code. In this situation, Visual Studio 2012 enables you to
preserve not only the state of your work but also your entire development
environment, so that you can switch to the urgent task and then resume your
current work later, hopefully minimizing the effects of the interruption.
To save your current context, you can simply click Shelve in the My Work
pane in Team Explorer. Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 saves
your code and settings to a shelveset in the Visual Studio Team Foundation
Server 2012 database. A shelveset is a serialized representation of your
environment, including the state and positions of any open windows.
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To continue with your work, you can select your shelveset from the list of
suspended activities and then resume it. Visual Studio 2012 downloads the
code and settings from the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012
database, restores your various windows, watches, breakpoints, and other
configuration data, and enables you to carry on from exactly where you left off.
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Code Reviews
Collaboration is a fundamental feature of application life cycle management
that has been improved in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012.
One way in which Visual Studio 2012 facilitates collaboration is by enabling
developers to request and perform code reviews by using Team Explorer. This
feature defines a workflow in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012
that saves project state and routes review requests as work items to team
members. As always with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012, these
workflows are independent of any specific process or methodology, so you can
incorporate code reviews at any convenient point in the project life cycle.
The Request Code Review link in the My Work pane enables you to create
a new code review task and assign it to one or more other developers.
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Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 creates a shelveset
for the project and stores it in the Visual Studio Team Foundation
Server 2012 database. This code review request then appears in
the My Work pane for each reviewer in Team Explorer.
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The reviewer can accept or decline the review and respond to any
messages or queries associated with the code review. When the reviewer
examines the code, Visual Studio 2012 displays the code by using a
“diff” format, which shows the original code and the changes that were
made by the developer who requested the review. This feature enables
the reviewer to quickly understand the scope of the changes.
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The reviewer can add comments to either the file or to specific parts of
the code. These comments are sent back as part of the code review.
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If the reviewer requires additional context or wants to suggest
modifications to the code, the reviewer can unshelve the shelveset for
the code review. This opens the entire solution and puts it in the state
that the developer was using when the code review was requested.
When the review is complete, the Send & Finish button in the Code Review
pane enables the reviewer to provide a quick summary of the feedback.
170

The results of the review appear in the Code Reviews & Requests section of the
My Work pane in Team Explorer for the developer that requested the review.
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The developer can click the review work items to examine
any comments that the reviewer made, and incorporate into
the code any changes that result from the review.
Code-Clone Analysis
Visual Studio has historically provided tools that enabled a developer
to improve code quality by refactoring code; for example, by extracting
commonly occurring functionality into a method. However, this process
depends on the developer to determine where such reusable code is
likely to occur. Different developers working on the same project may
not be aware of any such refactoring, resulting in duplicated code.
Another common phenomenon concerns the use of copy and paste; a developer
may copy a chunk of code that performs some useful task from one project
or file to another. If this occurs several times, it is possible that the same code
is added to different parts of the same project. Furthermore, if the code that
is copied contains a bug, the developer has probably duplicated this bug in
multiple places. The result is code that takes longer to test and correct.
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You can use the Code-Clone Analysis tool in a couple of ways. In
the first scenario, the Code-Clone Analysis tool examines your
solution to look for logic that is duplicated, enabling you to
factor this code out into one or more common methods.
The Code-Clone Analysis tool is intelligent—it does not just search for identical
blocks of code, it searches for semantically similar constructs by using heuristics.
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You can search through an entire solution to find all possible code clones,
or you can highlight a block of code and have the Code-Clone Analysis tool
find any code that is similar. This technique is useful if, for example, you are
correcting a bug in a piece of code and you want to know whether the same
bug resulting from a similar piece of code occurs elsewhere in the project.
Visual Studio includes strong architecture and code understanding
tools that have been enhanced significantly in Visual Studio
2012. New capabilities include the following:
• Faster generation of code dependency graphs. Now
dependencies are indexed, making it faster to create graphs
and update them incrementally as your code changes and evolves.
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• Graphs can now be created directly from solution explorer starting
from any types or member and their related items. Creating a graph
showing the related items and their parent container is now trivial. It
even supports drag and drop from solution
explorer to the dependency map.
• Full support for C or C++ projects for dependency diagrams,
Architecture Explorer and layer and dependency validation.
• Full support for editing and annotating dependency diagrams graphically,
including rearrangement, adding new nodes, deletion and comments.
• Once the graph is created, it can now be searched so a developer
can easily hone in on specific sections in complex diagrams. It can
also be panned and zoomed to focus on specific sections in greater relief.
Additionally, Unified Modeling Language (UML) tools have been
integrated into Visual Studio 2012 that enhance visualization and
modeling tasks such as generating code from models and creating
UML class diagrams (reverse engineering) from existing code.
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Notably, dependency graphs and layer diagrams continue to be extensible.
In addition new architecture contextual commands in the solution
explorer and architecture diagram also now have extension points.
Architecture tools in Visual Studio help you get your software projects off
to the right start, enable new developers to organically discover the project
details in a shorter timeframe, and help you control technical debt by enforcing
architecture restrictions for new code being checked into the project.
Continuous Unit Testing
Visual Studio 2012 provides a unit test runner that can continuously
execute unit tests in the background while you are working on your
code. You can see the results immediately, so you do not have to pause
and wait for test results. Test impact analysis ensures that the most
important tests are run first, so any failures appear in seconds.
In Visual Studio 2012, we have updated the unit testing capability
and made it easier to work with third-party unit testing frameworks
such as NUnit and xUnit. This capability is extensible.
You can integrate unit testing seamlessly into your projects. The Unit
Test Explorer in Visual Studio 2012 enables you to manually run the
tests that are defined for your project and view the results.
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For tests that fail, Visual Studio 2012 displays the reason for the failure and
a stack trace. You can click the link to the failing line of code and ascertain
the cause, make any necessary corrections, and run the unit tests again.
Performing Exploratory Testing
Unit testing is a planned operation based on a specific and well-
defined set of tests. However, the most revealing bugs are frequently
discovered as the result of unanticipated exploration of an application.
To support this method of working, Microsoft Test Manager enables you
to perform exploratory testing and to record any bugs that occur.
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The Exploratory Testing tool is ideal for implementing
Agile testing. Specifically, it enables you to:
• Test without performing formal test planning. You can now start
directly testing the product without spending time writing test
cases or composing test suites. When you start a new testing session,
the tool generates a full log of your interaction with the application
under test. You can annotate your session with notes,
and you can capture the screen at any point and add the
resulting screenshot to your notes. You can also attach a file
to provide any additional information that may be required.
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• File actionable bugs fast. While you are running the application, you
may encounter some unexpected behavior. The Exploratory Testing
tool enables you to generate a bug report, and the steps
that you performed to cause this behavior are automatically
included in the bug report. If necessary, you can edit these steps
or reorder them before you save the bug. You can also link the
bug to a task in Team Explorer, and then assign this task to a developer.
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• Create test cases. In addition to recording bugs, you can generate
test cases that are based on the steps that caused the bugs to appear.
You can edit the steps, reorder them, and insert additional
ones. This feature can help the test team to verify that a
bug is no longer present when the developer updates the
code. These test cases are stored in the Test Manager repository.
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• Manage exploratory testing sessions. When testing is complete,
you can return to Microsoft Test Manager, which saves the details
of the testing session and includes information such as the
duration, which new bugs were filed, and which test cases were created.
Providing Customer Feedback
Your customers and end users are the reason that you build software.
Therefore, obtaining their feedback is critical to the success of the project.
With Visual Studio 2012, we have implemented the Feedback Manager tool,
which enables these key stakeholders to provide timely and actionable
feedback to the development team. Actionable feedback includes not just
text comments but also videos, screenshots, and audio annotations that
help the user to highlight any specific issues. These items help the developer
to understand the context in which the user was performing the actions
when a problem occurred or a feature was found to work incorrectly.
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Using the Feedback Manager, the user can run the application and
record the ways in which the application is used. The user can also take
screenshots or record audio and video at any point, perhaps providing
a running narrative of the tasks that he or she is performing.
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The Feedback Manager records the user’s interactions with your application
and logs keystrokes, mouse clicks, and other events. When the user
has finished the feedback session, clicking Submit saves the feedback
information to the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 database.
The user also can provide a rating and comments for the application.
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The product owner in the development team can assess this feedback, generate
the appropriate work items and tasks that include the details that the user
provided, and assign them to a developer.
Getting Feedback from Applications in Production
If your applications running in the live environment display unusual behavior
or bugs, the operations staff can use IntelliTrace in production to capture
the details of that behavior and report it back to the development team.
Using IntelliTrace in this manner enables the operations staff to provide data
that gives the developers greater insight into the causes of bugs, and it can
greatly reduce the time it takes to fix such bugs in a production application.
IntelliTrace in production is an established debugging tool that records the
sequence of events that led to the unexpected behavior. The information that
IntelliTrace captures includes diagnostic data, details of exceptions, the call stack,
and a trace of where the code failed. The data that IntelliTrace captures can be
stored and then replayed by a member of the development team by using Visual
Studio 2012. A developer with Visual Studio 2012 can use this information to
debug the application as if it was running live on their development computer.
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Visual Studio also includes PreEmptive Analytics that provide real-time
feedback solutions for applications in production. This is perfect for
situations in which your application is fully deployed with customers, with a
limited access to each individual instance in order to debug it. This is very
common for client-side applications and mobile applications. PreEmptive
Analytics provides a system to send unhandled exceptions and diagnostic
data to an end point from where it can be aggregated automatically as
work items in TFS. Your team will have complete visibility into all unhandled
exceptions for your customers (who have Internet access), with bugs
filed automatically to be followed up and fixed for the next release.
Working Closely with Operations Personnel
Visual Studio provides a server monitoring solution for teams that use or
want to adopt System Center Operations Manager (SCOM). Visual Studio can
deploy a monitoring agent for ASP.NET applications running on a web server.
This agent collects rich data about exceptions, performance issues, and other
errors. Using the Work Item Synchronization for TFS, operations staff can
file these exceptions as work items in TFS and assign them to developers to
investigate in order to improve and fix production web applications. Visual
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Studio and the Work Item Synchronization for TFS, in conjunction with SCOM,
provide a real-time improvement feedback loop for server-based applications
deployed in production, leading to continuous improvements and high quality.
Visual Studio Team Foundation
Server 2012 in the Cloud
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 provides a powerful repository
for storing project data, but as with all server-based software, there are
costs associated with installing, configuring, and managing it. Additionally,
as an increasing number of projects take advantage of its features, you may
need to scale up the hosting platform to support the additional workload.
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Furthermore, as Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 becomes a critical
part of the development infrastructure, you must be prepared to maintain
it, including implementing an appropriate disaster-recovery strategy. These
requirements can add up to a significant investment in time and money.
To address these issues, we have made Visual Studio Team Foundation
Server 2012 available in the cloud, running under Windows Azure.
Simple Sign-Up and Immediate Web Access
Visual Studio Team Foundation Service features a friction-free signup experience
that enables teams to create and set up a complete Agile Application Life
Cycle Management system in a matter of seconds. By using a web browser and
providing an e-mail address, you can get your team up and running quickly.
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You need to specify a URL for your instance of Visual Studio Team Foundation
Server 2012, provide an invitation code, accept the Terms of Service, and click
Create Account. Within seconds, your account is created, and the Agile Application
Life Cycle Management system is set up and available for immediate use.
You can then enroll your team members and add them to the
service. It is hosted in the cloud, so Visual Studio Team Foundation
Service is available to all team members regardless of location—
they simply need to sign in and provide their credentials.
Consequently, this solution is ideal for geographically dispersed
teams. If you have a network connection, you can access Visual
Studio Team Foundation Service from anywhere.
Easy Collaboration with External Contributors
Collaboration and communication are essential elements in any successful
software development project. At different phases of the project, you
may need contributions from users or specialists who are external to your
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company or located in different locations around the world. Historically,
providing system and network access to these external stakeholders and
contributors has been a challenging task that involved either creating those
users as local users on your network and providing virtual private network
(VPN) access, or setting up an instance of the server in a perimeter network.
These tasks require skilled security professionals and, in many cases,
dedicated infrastructure and rigorous security management and policies.
Even if you are fortunate enough to have access to the appropriate
resources to enable this scenario, it still takes time. With Visual Studio
Team Foundation Service running in the cloud, you can provide access to
the system in seconds, and Microsoft takes on the burden of infrastructure
security and monitoring. In the User Administration portal, you simply enter
the e-mail addresses of the persons to whom you want to give access.
You can then specify the projects that they can access
and the operations that they can perform.
189

No Infrastructure Management
With Visual Studio Team Foundation Service in the cloud, you can spend your
time building great software instead of managing hardware infrastructure or
updating software. As the administrator of Visual Studio Team Foundation
Service, you do not have to concern yourself with tasks that do not add
value, such as performing operating system or software upgrades, making
backups, patching the server, or responding in the middle of the night to
hardware or power failures. Instead, Microsoft takes on that burden.
You have guaranteed access to world-class data centers and network
infrastructure with the peace of mind that Microsoft ensures that you
are always using the latest release of the software, that the system
incorporates world-class security, that the system is protected, and
that your data is backed up. You are free to focus on what is most
important to you: building software that delights your customers.
190

Support for Heterogeneous
Environments
Although Visual Studio 2012 is the ideal partner for Visual Studio Team
Foundation Server 2012, it is not the only development environment
in the world. Many organizations use other popular IDEs that are
based on Eclipse, and an important feature of Visual Studio Team
Foundation Server 2012 is its ability to integrate with these tools,
enabling developers to continue to use a familiar environment.
In a similar vein, although Hyper-V® is the preferred platform for provisioning
and managing virtual machines to test your applications, a number of
enterprises have invested in alternative private cloud IT infrastructures
such as VMware®. Visual Studio 2012 provides enhanced lab management
capabilities that can integrate with the test infrastructure of your choice.
Application Development
If you are familiar with an Eclipse-based IDE such as IBM® Rational®
Application Developer, Adobe® Flex® Builder™, or Aptana® Studio,
you can connect to Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 and take
advantage of its capabilities by using Team Explorer Everywhere.
Team Explorer Everywhere includes a plug-in for Eclipse that provides a significant
subset of the facilities that are available to Visual Studio 2012. For example, you
can view and edit your work items, employ version control over your application
code, track bugs, generate reports, and get an up-to-date view of the entire
project. The Team Explorer pane integrates directly into the Eclipse IDE.
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The plug-in also adds commands to the Team menu that support Team
Foundation Server check-in, check-out, and version-control features.
192

Lab Management
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 enables you to perform test
lab management without requiring that you spend time setting up and
configuring Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM).
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 provides zero-configuration,
which you can use to create standard environments from Microsoft Test
Manager by grouping the machines that you have provisioned in your
private cloud infrastructure. You only need to run a single wizard to create
your environment, and this wizard can create all of the necessary agents
and automatically install and configure them within the test machines.
193

You can use standard environments as part of manual or automated
testing and for build-deploy-test automation. To get additional benefits
such as snapshots, you can continue to create environments manually by
using SCVMM. Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 supports both
SCVMM 2008 R2 and SCVMM 2012, which has a number of enhancements
to simplify the management of your test lab infrastructure.
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Conclusion
Designing, building, deploying, and maintaining successful applications is a
collaborative effort that involves many people fulfilling a variety of roles. Visual
Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 provides a scalable repository that facilitates
active and meaningful communications among the different team members who
are working on a project. The tools provided with Visual Studio Team Foundation
Server 2012 enable developers, customers, and operations staff to capture
highly descriptive and actionable data about the way in which an application
behaves. Team Explorer in Visual Studio 2012 supplies a focused and up-to-
date view of the project and the various tasks that a developer must perform.
Together, all of these features help to improve the synergy that naturally exists
between the members of the team, enabling them to collaborate more effectively
and thereby increase the productivity of the entire development process.
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Visual Studio has long been an excellent tool for developers. The new version,
Visual Studio 2012, incorporates the major enhancements for developers
that are documented in this guide. And now Visual Studio also includes key
enhancements that promote greater involvement by other stakeholders—
product managers, designers, team leaders, architects, testers, customers, and
others—in the development process. By bringing together key functionalities
and integrating more closely with other technologies, Visual Studio 2012
enables these other stakeholders to interact more efficiently with developers,
which ultimately helps to improve the quality of software solutions.
Visual Studio
2012 for Other
Project Stakeholders
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Managing development tasks has never been easier with Visual
Studio 2012 Team Foundation Server (TFS), which now boasts a
touch friendly web UI, enabling stakeholders to manage their
product backlog and task board on their touch devices.
Product Managers and Designers
In the past, product managers and designers typically had only intermittent
exposure to Visual Studio. With Visual Studio 2012, product managers can
use Visual Studio or the Web Access application. With Visual Studio 2012
TFS, product managers can create project backlog items, create associated
tasks, and assign those tasks to sprints. For more information on the features
available to product managers and designers, see the chapter Application
Life Cycle Management with Visual Studio 2012 in this product guide.
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Project Managers
Project managers may not have access to Visual Studio, yet need quick, easy,
anywhere access to key project metrics. With Visual Studio 2012 TFS, project
managers can use the Web Access application to access project data. They can
view project or individual utilization, and assign team members accordingly. They
can track sprint progress and review the task board to see current assignments.
Visual Studio already provides native integration for high-quality project
management tools such as Microsoft Project. Through TFS 2012, there is now
native support for a connector to Project Server, which enables organizations
to create a centralized view of all in-progress software projects.
For more information on the features available to project managers,
see the section “Managing a Project” in the Application Life Cycle
Management with Visual Studio 2012 chapter of this product guide.
199

Team Leaders and Architects
Architects play a key role in developing a software application, particularly if the
application is large and involves many developers. Architects bring their great
experience to bear in deciding the best way to build an application. Traditionally,
architects also enforce an agreed upon design. Additionally, architects manage
the valuable assets represented by the existing code base, work to reduce
technical debt, and ensure that new projects work seamlessly with past projects.
Visual Studio 2012 introduces new robust architecture design,
discovery, and enforcement tools for project architects in
order to help teams deliver on the agreed design.
In addition, a code clone feature gives team leaders and architects tools to
understand when the code base needs refactoring to make it more efficient
and reusable, which reduces errors and improves quality and maintainability.
Code reviewer is another role that may be performed by a team leader, although
in some organizations reviews are performed by peers. Visual Studio 2012
makes code reviews easy. Developers can request a review, associate the review
with a work item, and choose who they want to perform the review. For more
information on code reviews, see the section “Code Reviews” in the Application
Life Cycle Management with Visual Studio 2012 chapter of this product guide.
Customers
Successful applications rely on input from external contributors who can help with
the design of the application and provide feedback during and after development.
Visual Studio 2012 includes the PowerPoint Storyboarding tool that product
managers and designers can use to get rapid feedback from external contributors
on the interface design. For more information on the PowerPoint Storyboarding
tool, see the section “Gathering User Requirements” in the Application Life
Cycle Management with Visual Studio 2012 chapter of this product guide.
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In addition to helping create interface mockups, external
contributors such as end users can provide useful early
feedback. Visual Studio 2012 includes the Feedback
Manager tool. End users and other stakeholders can use
the Feedback Manager tool to record themselves while
using the application and to provide their feedback on
the application. The feedback is saved directly to the
TFS database, providing easy access for the developers,
architects, testers, project and product manager, and
other stakeholders. For more information on the Feedback
Manager tool, see the section “Providing Customer
Feedback” in the Application Life Cycle Management
with Visual Studio 2012 chapter of this product guide.
201

Contributors often are external to a company, or are not in the same domain
or office. TFS Online simplifies the problems associated with enabling access
to TFS for users beyond the perimeter network of an organization. With TFS
Online, external users no longer require a VPN or credentials against the local
domain. TFS Online enables you to easily add users from outside the company
or in geographically dispersed locations simply by using their Microsoft
account credentials. For more information on TFS, see the section “Visual
Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 in the Cloud” in the Application Life
Testers
Testers are key members of the development team. Visual Studio 2012 makes
testers first-class members of the development process. Testers can use
Test Manager to create test plans and perform tests. For more information
on Test Manager, see the section “Visual Studio 2012 Product Family” in
the Introduction to Visual Studio 2012 chapter of this product guide .
202

Testers create test labs in order to test applications in multiple environments.
Lab Manager enables testers to create virtual test environments quickly, deploy
the application, and then complete automatic tests. For more information
on Lab Manager, see the section “Lab Management” in the Application Life
In addition to structured testing, application errors are often identified
by performing unstructured exploratory testing. Visual Studio 2012
Test Manager supports exploratory testing. The tester can perform
unstructured testing and the test manager will track the user’s actions
and record the steps. For more information on exploratory testing, see
the section “Performing Exploratory Testing” in the Application Life Cycle
203

Visual Studio 2012 ships with many enhancements that will help testers
and developers ensure solutions are suitably tested. These include:
• Backward compatibility with Visual Studio 2010 test types.
• Unit test and code analysis support for Windows Store applications.
• HTML log files for analyzing Coded UI Test issues. Testers are also
able to filter and display the most relevant and actionable information
so that end-users can troubleshoot and fix Coded UI Test failures.
• Rich action logs containing text and images for Windows
Store applications built with Visual C# and C++.
• Simplified test agent and controller communication in a cross-
domain or workgroup environment with a lab service account
• Licensing simplification for load testing. You no longer need
virtual user licenses to increase the number of
virtual users that you can use in your load tests.
End-user Developers
End-user developers create applications to meet specific business needs,
often as a secondary role. End user developers can use the Express edition
of Visual Studio 2012 to create applications for a variety of devices. The
Express edition supports integration with TFS, providing the integrated
experience without the need to install the full version of Visual Studio.
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For data-driven applications, end-user developers can use Microsoft
Visual Studio LightSwitch™ projects in Visual Studio 2012, which
enables them to quickly and easily create data-driven applications
by using visual tools and writing minimal code. This speeds up
development and also helps to ensure more secure solutions.
205

Operations Staff
Operations staff often encounters bugs not seen in testing. Inevitably, the
production environment differs from the testing environment, causing unforeseen
problems. With Visual Studio 2012, you can use IntelliTrace in Production to
generate trace information about your application and, where appropriate, to
automatically send that information to TFS. The PreEmptive Analytics feature
enables you to automatically generate bug reports based on unhandled
exceptions, which developers can fix in a future release. For more information on
IntelliTrace in Production, see the section “Getting Feedback from Applications
in Production” in the Application Life Cycle Management with Visual Studio 2012
chapter of this product guide.
For web applications deployed by using System Center Operations
Manager, you can deploy a monitoring agent that collects data about
performance issues and exceptions. Operations staff can use this in
conjunction with Microsoft TFS Connector to raise bugs and assign bugs to
developers, providing a real-time feedback loop for deployed applications.
For more information on server monitoring solutions, see the section
“Working Closely with Operations Personnel” in the Application Life Cycle
206

Conclusion
Professional software development is an engineering process that
involves not just developers, but also the whole range of planning,
testing, management, and operations staff, together with the end-
users for whom the software is being developed. The Visual Studio 2012
family provides a range of integrated tools that enable all stakeholders to
cooperate to keep development projects on track, and that help to ensure
that the delivered software is timely, functional, and cost-effective.
207

Feature Matrix
See which features and other benefits are included in the various
Visual Studio 2012 editionss and find which is the best for you at
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/compare
Get the free mobile app at
http://gettag.mobi
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