Product Overview for Visual Studio .NET 2003 Academic

What's New in Visual Studio .NET 2003 Academic?

Visual Studio .NET 2003 Academic offers full support for the Microsoft .NET Framework version 1.1 and includes significant improvements for device development. Visual Studio .NET 2003 Academic also provides full support for the .NET Compact Framework, allowing seamless development for mobile and embedded devices, such as the Pocket PC and Pocket PC phone edition, as well as other devices powered by the Windows® CE .NET operating system. Web Services Enhancements (WSE) in Visual Studio .NET 2003 adds support for the latest Web services standards, including routing, attachment, and security. Visual Studio .NET 2003 Academic also includes an improved Visual Basic® .NET Upgrade Wizard, as well as C++ enhancements that lead to greater ANSI/ISO compliance. With Windows Server 2003 and Visual Studio .NET 2003 Academic, students can learn to rapidly develop and deploy dependable, connected applications.

Visual Studio .NET 2003 Academic brings the power of Microsoft .NET Framework into the classroom. It combines all of the features of Visual Studio .NET 2003 Professional with new tools and features, including Assignment Manager, student and faculty documentation, and sample code. All of these simplify course management by providing a set of tools that enable the publication of courses and assignments for students that may be accessed from a Web server, a network share, or a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) site.

Visual Studio .NET 2003 Academic offers:

• A flexible and rich learning environment for student developers
  With the help of features like the object browser, class browser, and IntelliSense®, beginning students can master basic programming, and advanced students can learn to build complex XML Web services and applications. Students can also rapidly build Microsoft Windows applications for Web and Mobile Devices.
• Powerful course management tools for faculty
  Added functionality enables the publishing of courses and assignments to locations where students may access them using Visual Studio .NET 2003 Academic.
• Special features designed for academic needs
  Both students and faculty benefit from special features designed for instructional settings.

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Learn to Program in a Rich and Flexible Environment

Multiple-language support and interoperability enable students to write applications using a programming language of their choice. Visual Studio .NET 2003 Academic supports languages, that are used by more than 70 percent of all professional developers, including Visual Basic, C, C++, C#, and Java. In addition, the Microsoft .NET Framework has built-in support for dozens of other programming languages, including COBOL, Fortran, Scheme, Oberon, and Component Pascal. Cross-language inheritance enables students to share and reuse code across multiple languages, while cross-language debugging makes it easy to locate code errors in a multi-language environment.

Students can learn to quickly build powerful database, server, and Microsoft Windows-based graphical user interface (GUI) applications by employing XML, Windows Forms, Web Forms, and ADO.NET tools. Additionally, students can create solutions that work with any Internet-enabled device and integrate with any platform using XML services. ASP.NET mobile controls (formerly the Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit) and Smart Device Programmability in Visual Studio .NET 2003 Academic enable students to create a single Web solution that integrates smoothly with any operating system and mobile device, including mobile phones, Pocket PCs, handheld devices, and pagers.

Faculty will find that Visual Studio .NET Academic 2003 provides a useful development environment for courses that focus on programming. Several enhancements to the feature set of Visual Studio .NET 2003 Professional enable faculty to easily create and manage courses and assignments at both the beginning and advanced levels. Faculty can help students visualize computing concepts through the class and object browsers. Help documentation written specifically for academic users makes Visual Studio .NET 2003 Academic a tool of choice for faculty and students.

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Utilize Faculty Tools for Course Management

Useful features such as Code Extraction help faculty create student starter projects by removing designated code from working code solutions. The starter project is then published with the assignment and provides the base for the student's coding work. This feature may be used with either the Assignment Publishing Tools or Assignment Manager.

Assignment Publishing Tools enable faculty to publish courses and assignments so that students may access them from a Web server, a network share, or an FTP site. Once an assignment is published, the Assignment Manager tool helps instructors to submit assignments securely, track assignment submissions, automatically build student solutions, notify students of assignment grades, and send messages to students.

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Facilitate Learning Through Special Instructional Features

Visual Studio .NET 2003 Academic includes nine complete student assignments written in languages supported by the Visual Studio environment and ranging in difficulty from simple to advanced. This sample set of assignments includes those commonly found in computer science or information systems programs: Hello World; Tic-Tac-Toe; Diff Tool; Elementary Data Structures; Expression Parser; Sorting; Tile Puzzle; Towers of Hanoi; and Network Chat.

The in-depth documentation in Visual Studio .NET 2003 Academic supports both faculty and student users. Students can learn quickly using detailed walkthroughs for topics, such as creating console applications and using the debugger. Faculty documentation describes the course management tools and provides instructions for deploying Visual Studio .NET 2003 Academic in computer science laboratories. The documentation also includes a rich Help reference.

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Teach Server-Side Programming Quickly and Easily

With the rapid application development (RAD) features in Visual Studio .NET 2003 Academic, faculty can teach server-side programming in first- and second-year computer science classes. For example, students can compose middle-tier components visually using the Visual Component Designer, which enables them to drag and drop message queues, timers, event logs, and other non-visual objects from the Toolbox. This reduces the amount of code required to build middle-tier components, while allowing for greater functionality in student assignments.

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