Flurry Of New Tools Target Microsoft Visual Studio .Net Developers

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February 11, 2003 (12:19 PM EST)

Flurry Of New Tools Target Microsoft Visual Studio .Net Developers

Marking the one-year anniversary of the Visual Studio .Net development tool suite, a slew of companies have posted product announcements at this week's VSLive, a San Francisco conference for .Net developers.

Although Microsoft isn't debuting any new tools, several .Net supporters have pitched in instead. The final beta of Visual Studio .Net 2003, the tool for building .Net-connected software, was announced in November, and the final release should show in April.

Among those making announcements:

—Groove Networks on Tuesday said its Groove Toolkit for Visual Studio .Net is ready to go into production. The toolkit lets developers create and test Groove's collaborative applications without leaving the Visual Studio .Net environment. Among the Groove tools now available within Visual Studio are those for developing support for online and offline use, continuous data synchronization, security, and automatic firewall and network address translator (NAT) traversal. The Toolkit is available for free downloading from the Groove Web site and requires Groove Workspace v2.5, the Groove Development Kit, and any edition of Visual Studio .Net.

—Borland launched Optimizeit Profiler for Microsoft .Net, a tool that spots problems in any .Net-managed code -- including C#, C++, and Visual Basic .Net -- such as performance bottlenecks, memory leaks, and inefficient algorithms. The results include easier performance tuning and faster development of .Net-based applications. Borland also announced that it has joined Microsoft's Visual Studio .Net Integration Program, Microsoft's partnering plan for the development environment.

—Sanctum, a security software creator, debuted its AppScan Developer Edition 1.5, a testing tool that will integrate with Visual Studio .Net 2003 to pinpoint and offer fixes for security defects. AppScan DE will be available in the spring, when Visual Studio .Net 2003 is scheduled for release.

—PreEmtive Solutions released Dotfuscator Professional Edition 1.2, another developer tool tied to the .Net Framework. Dotfuscator provides tools for trimming code size, encrypting code strings, and for protecting code against reverse engineering by hackers using disassemblers to pull a program and sniff for vulnerabilities. Available immediately, Dotfuscator costs $1,500 per user.

—eHelp unveiled its RoboHelp Office Pro for .Net. Aimed at developers working in Visual Studio .Net, RoboHelp is a help-authoring system that supports the .Net Framework, and includes tools for creating help systems in formats ranging from Windows Forms and ASP .Net Web Forms to XML Web services. RoboHelp will be available this month, and is priced starting at $2,000.

—ActiveState released PerlASPX 1.0, a development environment aimed at Perl programmers creating on Microsoft ASP .Net Web servers. PerlASPX, which currently lets developers code in Perl to build XML Web services, will be updated as soon as Visual Studio .Net 2003 releases to support the new Microsoft tool suite.

—Corel started shipping its XMetaL 4 development suite, which includes XMetaL Developer, a plug-in to Visual Studio .Net that provides an environment for creating Corel XMetaL customizations and applications.