Microsoft has an ambitious wish list for a planned upgrade to its application lifecycle management platform, including offering its ALM server via a hosted model.
Support for databases such as Oracle and IBM DB2 also is on the long list of possible improvements cited during a VSLive conference presentation in San Francisco on Monday.
The planned Rosario version of Microsoft Visual Studio Team System and the Team Foundation Server ALM server would feature three primary improvement areas: alignment of application development with the business, application quality and testing, and continuous improvement in the ALM core, according to Microsoft.
Under the business alignment "pillar" of improvements, investments include requirements traceability, integration with Microsoft Office Project Server, enterprise-class Project client integration, lightweight project management tools, and reporting.
In the area of application quality and testing, features are set to focus on test prioritization, test case management, automation, T-SQL (Transact SQL) quality tools, and historical debugging. Other improvements include gated code check-in and static analysis rule sets. Also, users would be able to offload a debugger onto a USB key, for portability. This feature is known as "debugger on a thumb drive" and drew a positive review from attendee Richard Stillwell, software change and configuration management analyst at RLI Insurance.
"It would make our lives so much easier," by having a portable debugger for different client systems, Stillwell said.
Continuous improvements in the ALM core planned include administrative and operations improvements, source control enhancements, distributed build, source control branch visualization and offering the Team Foundation Server (TFS) ALM server as a hosted service.
TFS could be hosted by Microsoft and third-party providers. Users might pay $30 per month for a TFS server "and then you don't have to maintain this thing," said Microsoft's Stephanie Saad, group manager for Visual Studio team System.
While there is no set date for the release of Rosario, Saad noted that Microsoft traditionally has had 18-24-month release cycles for its tools. The most recent release, Visual Studio Team System 2008, shipped in November 2007.
Microsoft, she said, sees software development connected with the business, project management and operations. The long-term vision is to bring all these together, she said.
While the company initially thought distributed development would be a focus, customers instead cited problem areas including aligning application development with the business and application quality and testing.
"There's been a ton of feedback on needing better testing tools," Saad said.
With Rosario, users would see a hierarchy of relationships in a project that breaks down into tasks. Predecessor-successor relationships also would be shown.
"This is our vision. You'll be able to have hierarchical relationships in Visual Studio Team System," she said.
Integration is planned with Project Server, which can merge data about multiple projects.
Get the independent advice and expertise you need to support a virtual workforce.
The increase in Linux popularity has increased the frequency and sophistication of malware attacks. Read this 2 page white paper now to learn how you can protect your Linux environment with real-time protection that is certified by all major Linux vendors.
Download now »
Ensuring acceptable application delivery will become even more difficult over the next few years. As a result, IT organizations need to ensure that the approach that they take to resolving the current application delivery challenges can scale to support the emerging challenges. This handbook elaborates on the key tasks associated with planning, optimization, management and control and provides decision criteria to help IT organizations choose appropriate solutions.
Download now »
A common misconception is that mid-range storage requirements are dramatically different than that of a larger enterprise. Mid-range storage users may require less capacity, but they have similar functionality and management requirements. This ESG paper examines mid-range storage needs and reviews a new solution that adjusts size while retaining value, performance and functionality.
Download now »
Sign up to receive InfoWorld Resource Alerts
Recommend This
