Orcas Jan 2007 CTP VPC

Microsoft Downloads - Microsoft Pre-release Software Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" - January 2007 Community Technology Preview (CTP)

"Visual Studio code name “Orcas” delivers on Microsoft’s vision of smart client applications by enabling developers to rapidly create connected applications that deliver the highest quality rich user experiences. This new version enables any size organization to rapidly create more secure, manageable, and more reliable applications that take advantage of Windows Vista and the 2007 Office System. By building these new types of applications, organizations will find it easier than ever before to capture and analyze information so that they can make effective business decisions.

This download is the January 2007 Community Technology Preview of Microsoft Visual Studio Code-Named “Orcas”. This CTP is available in English only.

Note: This CTP is available as a Virtual PC image or as a self-extracting install.

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Saying there's tons of updates in the CTP is an understatement... Lots of C# 3 stuff, Linq stuff, ADO Entity stuff, etc.

But the thing I'm excited about? The movement in the add-in support! There's an article in the latest MSDN about it (CLR Inside Out - .NET Application Extensibility), and now we're seeing it in code.

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Support for advanced lifetime management of add-ins and their AppDomains

• We’ve added the helper classes that manage the lifetime of add-ins, the objects passed between the host and add-ins, and even of the AppDomains the add-ins live in. By using the ContractBase and LifetimeToken handle, pipeline developer can let the hosts and add-ins act as if everything, including the AppDomain the add-in was activated in, was controlled by the garbage collector even though .Net Remoting would normally make that impossible.

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As you know, I've been saying for a long time that application Add-in support needs to be backed into .Net. It's great to see that happening in this release...

I'm looking forward to Orcas's release at PDC (which is my WAG release date for Orcas  ;)