Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0, Professional Edition

Five main development tools comprise Visual Studio:

• Visual Basic 6.0 helps you create applications quickly. Visual Basic excels at creating attractive graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and custom front ends for databases. It's also an easy way to create component object model (COM) resources. Visual Basic is a popular, relatively easy-to-learn tool for general-purpose Windows programming.

• Visual C++ 6.0 is Microsoft's low-level development environment for C and C++ software. Oriented around the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), Visual C++ puts the least overhead between your programs and Windows, meaning they will (if properly designed and implemented) run faster than programs written in any other Microsoft environment. It's great for games, device drivers, and other solutions in which top performance is more critical than ease of development.

• Visual J++ 6.0 allows you to write software in a variant of Java tailored to the Windows environment. Visual J++ stand-alone applications aren't platform-independent as true Java applications are, unless you're careful to avoid the Windows-specific classes, which is hard to do. Some developers prefer its object orientation scheme to that of other Windows development languages.

• Visual FoxPro 6.0 supports the FoxPro language, with which you can build applications that refer to databases. Because this environment supports COM and distributed COM (DCOM), it's possible to build FoxPro applications that access databases and other computational resources across a network.

• Visual InterDev 6.0 is the ultimate tool for developing Internet resources that fit the Microsoft Document Object Model (DOM). While Visual InterDev's power really shows when you're writing for an intranet based on Internet Explorer 5, you can use it to create platform-independent pages suitable for open Internet sites. You'll be happy with Visual InterDev as a means of creating browser interfaces for your back-end databases, COM objects, and other Microsoft componentry.

On top of the primary development tools (which are well integrated by common interface elements and an ability to share components), Visual Studio ships with a considerable supporting cast of goodies. Visual Studio Installer enables you to write installation scripts for your software. Visual SourceSafe helps development teams manage large projects by managing code check-in and check-out chores. Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE) is a freely distributable Structured Query Language (SQL) server that's compatible with Microsoft SQL Server 7.0, so you can build distributed SQL applications for growing workgroups without having to buy SQL Server right away. You get quite a bit of documentation and training material too.

To put it simply, Visual Studio 6.0 is the best tool you'll find for efficiently creating Windows applications that can interact with the network resources as well as the Windows environment. This is the tool of choice for working inside Microsoft's COM framework. If you're familiar with the Microsoft architecture (or know you want to learn it) and want the latest tools for building within it, this is the most cost-effective way to outfit your workstation with everything you need. --David Wall

Amazon.com Product Description
Rapidly build business solutions using Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0, the complete enterprise development tool suite. Winner of the PC Magazine Technical Excellence Award, as well as the PC Computing MVP Award, Visual Studio allows you to build scalable applications for Windows and the Web that easily integrate with existing systems. The Visual Studio 6.0 development suite sets the standard for developer productivity and comprehensive design support with integrated features across all the popular languages. Visual Studio 6.0 Professional Edition includes the complete set of development tools for building reusable applications in Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0, Visual C++ 6.0, Visual J++ 6.0, or Visual FoxPro 6.0. Visual InterDev 6.0 provides easy integration with the Internet and a full Web-page authoring environment. To take advantage of the latest capabilities for developing Windows 2000 and mobile computing applications, Visual Studio 6.0 now includes the Windows 2000 Developer's Readiness Kit and the freely redistributable SQL Server 7.0 compatible Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE) for mobile applications.