Launched: SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005, and BizTalk 2006

With the launch of Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005, and BizTalk Server 2006, we’ve invited back some of the greatest MSDN webcast speakers to take you on a lap around the new products. Tune in as we cover everything from SQL Server 2005 database development, the new enhancements in ASP.NET 2.0, and Smart Client development to best practices in designing and architecting both enterprise and hobbyist applications. Register now!

This month the MSDN Virtual Lab team offers five virtual labs. Virtual labs run in a hosted environment. To search for labs, see TechNet Virtual Labs

The purpose this lab is to illustrate the benefits of the Distributed System Designers available in Visual Studio 2005 to application architects, operations teams, and developers. These designers help application architects and developers construct service-oriented applications and prepare them for deployment in a target datacenter modeled by operations. In this lab, you will construct and validate a distributed application using the Distributed System Designers.

For the purpose of this walkthrough, you will only use the Application Designer. The Application Designer is a part of the Distributed System Designers that will be shipped in Microsoft Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Architects. The purpose of this lab is to illustrate the benefits of the Application Designer in designing service-oriented Web service architectures.

In this walkthrough, you will use Logical Datacenter Designer as part of the Distributed System Designers and ship in Microsoft Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Architects. This lab illustrates how Logical Datacenter Designer is used in designing for deployment. In this lab, you will learn more about defining and specifying constraints and settings in Logical Datacenter Designer. You will also learn how to create and save a prototype of a zone that can be distributed for reuse in other logical datacenter diagrams. Additionally, this lab will introduce you to the deployment report.

For the purpose of this walkthrough, you will use the Domain Specific Language Tools for Visual Studio 2005 to build a graphical designer integrated into Visual Studio for your own domain specific language. The DSL Tools are an SDK that allows you to use Microsoft’s generic modeling platform to build visual modeling tools that run inside of Visual Studio. The SDK contains code generation tools that will generate a running designer based on an XML description.

This lab illustrates the benefits of the new Class Diagramming tool available in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. The Class Diagramming tool, also referred to as the Class Designer, provides visualization, class building, refactoring and documenting features to help architects and developers work with class structures. Developers can use the Class Designer for understanding existing code, designing new class, reviewing/refactoring, and documenting code. Class diagrams are constructed to display notation native to a .NET language (for example, C#, Microsoft Visual Basic). Moreover, they automatically synchronize with the underlying code to ensure that diagrams remain relevant throughout the development cycle.

Microsoft Learning is currently offering eight Visual Studio 2005 courses. These courses will only be available free until November 17th, so get your 90-day subscription today.

Give feedback! MSDN chats provide a forum for you to engage in discussion with Microsoft experts about Microsoft products or technologies. On November 16th, join us at 10:00 am PST to discuss the Profiler, Test Tools (Unit, Generic, Manual), Web Load Testing, and Code Analysis (FxCop & PREFast). Learn more.

Want a reminder? Add this to your calendar.

Get hands-on with Visual Studio 2005 Team System by ordering Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2.