Visual InterDev For Dummies

By Bill Hatfield

Chapter 1: What is Visual InterDev? (And Why Does It Have such a Funny Name?)

In This Chapter

The history of Visual InterDev
The origin of the (how should we say?) unique name
What Visual InterDev does
Microsoft's goals in developing the product
How Visual InterDev fits in with other tools

The World Wide Web started as a simple idea -- text pages, tags, graphics, and the ever-present hyperlink making it possible to skip and hop from one page to the next.

But the development of this idea resulted in the nagging impression that so much more was possible. And so this simple technology has grown into a complex web of new ideas implemented as new technologies to make the Web faster, more graphical, more engaging, more information reach and, above all, more interactive.

But all these technologies have their own tools and their own way of integrating into the Web world. Bringing it all together to fulfill the promise of the Web has been a challenge -- until now.

Visual InterDev 6 is the first tool to truly integrate all the essential features needed to make the interactive Web not only possible, but actually pretty easy to do! By integrating simple scripting languages with object-oriented concepts Visual InterDev 6 takes a giant step forward in the goal of making Web applications as interactive and full-featured as any other computer application.

What Is Visual InterDev 6.0

Visual InterDev 6.0 is a development environment that is designed to make creating and maintaining Web applications for the Internet and corporate Intranets easy.

Here's the scoop on the background, the name, and the version

When Microsoft first began working on the Visual InterDev project it was referred to by the ominous name Blackbird. It was originally imagined as a tool for developing content using Microsoft's proprietary technologies in Microsoft Network. But Microsoft quickly realized that an Internet based on its proprietary technologies would not be taken seriously in an Internet industry that already had very good standards in place.

So, Microsoft switched gears and decided that its new approach would be to "embrace and extend" the already-existing Internet standards and technologies. This, as it turns out, was exactly the right move. And with this new, kinder, gentler approach, Microsoft decided to change what was once called Blackbird. Now code-named Internet Studio, this new development application was being designed to bring together all the best tools for creating Web content and to put them under one roof. The product would also make database access from Web pages not only possible but actually easy.

After much development, many sneak previews, and more than a little ballyhoo, Microsoft released a new product in early 1997: Visual InterDev 1.0. Until the announcement of the product, many rumors about the product's name were circulating. Some favored continuing with the bland Internet Studio while others touted the cryptic Visual I++, to maintain continuity with Visual C++ and Visual J++ (other Microsoft programming products). The final name was quite a surprise @md it's a combination of the words Internet and Development. Although some may find the name clumsy and even a little ugly, it is unique enough to be copyrighted and, after all, this is business.

Visual InterDev 1.0 was an unusual product. It seemed to glom a variety of tools all together. And, like the name, the result wasn't very pretty. But it was surprisingly productive. No single environment put the capabilities of all these tools so readily at hand. Visual InterDev quickly became the favorite Web development tool for many.

Then in September of 1998, Visual InterDev 6 was released.

Now wait a minute! What happened to Visual InterDev 2 through 5? A very good question. The answer is that they simply never existed. Visual InterDev is a part of a larger package called Visual Studio that includes products such as Visual Basic, Visual C++, and Visual J++. Microsoft decided to release the new version of all these products at once and to make the version number of all the products the same. So Visual InterDev aged five generations in just over a year. For more information on Visual Studio, see "How Does Visual InterDev 6 Fit Into Visual Studio?" later in this chapter.

Visual InterDev 6.0 is different from other Web page creation tools, in that it is designed like an application development environment - like Visual Basic or Visual C++. It not only looks similar to these tools, but it also works in much the same way. It is designed to create Web applications, not just Web pages.

The difference between a set of pages and an application is that an application does something, rather than just displaying information. For example, a real-estate page that shows houses for sale is just a Web page, but one that can actually calculate your mortgage payment based on your down-payment and length of the loan is a Web application. Applications can be simple or complex, obvious or subtle. But they transform Web technologies from passive information storage and retrieval to an active, intelligent platform.

Microsoft's Key Goals for Visual InterDev (And Why You Should Care!)

If you make your living at computer programming, the decisions you make about what tools to work with are very important. If you work with a development environment for three years and it ends up being abandoned or its company ends up going out of business, then you have thre years of experience in a development envrironment that no one cares about. That can be a problem!

So when you are looking at a new development tool like Visual InterDev, it is essential to know what it is and how its company is positioning the product for the future. Because of that, I've included below a list of what Microsoft's stated goals are for the product and what they mean to you as a developer.

Because Visual InterDev is a development environment, its goals are very different from other Web page development tools. What you want out of Visual InterDev is similar to what you want out of Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, or other client/server development environments. Specifically, you want:

A rapid prototyping and development environment. The demands of business make it absolutely essential that prototypes and completed applications be delivered in as short a time as possible. Visual InterDev automates many common activities. Tasks that would otherwise be very tedious are often as simple as a drag and drop. Among the features which make development fast and easy: WYSIWYG page editing and form creation, built-in site design and management utilities, a client- and server-side script debugger, and an open, extensible and customizable development environment that works like other Microsoft development environments.
Complete integration of the database into the development environment. Although client/server databases often run on separate database servers, their use is so much a part of the development process, that you need to have easy access to their data and even to their structure. Visual InterDev offers an easy-to-use visual interface for creating new tables, adding and modifying data as well as creating queries to be used in the application itself. In addition, Visual InterDev recordsets make it easy for the application to automatically keep track of changes and generate the appropriate SQL to update the database.
An easy-to-understand, coherent programming model. Because the Web often uses a variety of technologies and a variety of platforms, Web development can quickly become a very complicated process. Microsoft has forged a new way to tame this complexity while still providing the broadest flexibility possible. The Visual InterDev environment and the Scripting Object Model create a simplified, yet powerful way to accelerate the development of complex applications.
Team development features. A Web application is different from other software development projects - not everyone working on the project is a programmer. You are just as likely to have page layout designers, graphic artists, content writers all working together on the same project. So flexible team development is even more important on the Web.
Ability to create industrial-strength, enterprise-wide, or mission-critical applications. These terms are often used to separate simple, single-user applications from important corporate applications. There are a number of issues that are often implied when terms like this are used:

Scalability: The ability for an application to work with a small or large number of users
Reliability: The assurance that the application will always be available and that it will always work as you expect it to
Client/Server database accessibility: Provides secure, multi-user data storage that assures data integrity.
Distributed capabilities: May be used by users across the company or across the world.
Support for diverse technologies: Provides access to legacy systems or databases that hold or maintain information that needs to be integrated.
Team development support: Because some applications are so large that they couldn't possibly be done in a reasonable time by one or two developers, they must have the ability to share information, source code and ideas without getting in each other's way.

All these goals add up to a very tall order for the second version of a product - even if it does have 6 after its name! But Visual InterDev 6 is a very big step toward meeting all these goals. The fact that such a strong product was developed in such a short time is astonishing!

And I think that it is safe to say that Microsoft intends to continue to keep this product at the front and center of their development tools. Their goal is that Visual InterDev will do for Web development exactly what Visual Basic did for Windows development -- make it fast, easy and very productive.

Okay, So What's Visual Studio?

Microsoft Visual Studio 6 is the latest version of Microsoft’s complete suite of software development tools. Visual Studio collects together all the tools you need to develop software in the same way that Microsoft Office collects together all the most commonly used business applications. Among the development tools in Visual Studio are:

* Visual InterDev

* Visual J++

* Visual Basic

* Visual C++

Visual InterDev is one of the newest additions to be added to Visual Studio. It is designed to provide a general platform for creating complex Web pages and Web applications to meet the needs of Internet and intranet developers.

Visual J++ is also a relatively new addition to this suite. It’s a Java development environment that enables you to create both client-side and server-side Java programs for use in Web applications as well as completely stand-alone Java applications. Web components created in Visual J++ can be easily integrated into a Visual InterDev project.

Visual Basic is another Visual Studio component that is designed to work closely with Visual InterDev. You can use Visual Basic to create ActiveX components that, like Java components, can run on either the client or the server. The Visual Basic language is extremely popular and very easy to learn. Because of this, the Visual InterDev/Visual Basic combination offers probably the quickest and easiest way to create complete Web-based applications to meet almost any need.

Finally, Visual C++ is the granddaddy in Visual Studio. It has been around in one form or another for many years and is the most popular platform for low-level development on the market.

How Are Visual InterDev 6.0 and Front Page Different?

You may have heard of Microsoft FrontPage. Isn't it also a tool for helping you create Web pages? Why does Microsoft have two products to do essentially the same thing?

The main reason is because FrontPage and Visual InterDev are designed for two different kinds of people.

Microsoft FrontPage is a very easy-to-use package. In fact, it works very much like a word processor. You simply type in the text, add styles, insert graphics, and save your creation as a new Web page. Using FrontPage, anyone can begin creating pages after only a few minutes of instruction.

But FrontPage can’t do everything. Although it is very flexible and makes a lot of complex tasks easy, it is not designed for creating pages that access and process data from databases or for easily creating other kinds of complex Web applications.

That’s where Visual InterDev comes in. Visual InterDev is also pretty easy to use, but it is definitely not designed for the average Microsoft Word user. It’s a product designed for software developers who are familiar with products such as Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, or Delphi.

In exchange for this added complexity, though, Visual InterDev provides a vast array of capabilities for creating powerful Web applications that would be very difficult to do without it. It cuts the time for creating database and client/server Web applications into a fraction of the time it would take using other Web development tools.

But here’s the best news: Visual InterDev and FrontPage work together seamlessly! They access the same Web projects in the same way and can easily be used together. So the content providers and graphic artists can work in FrontPage while the programmers use Visual InterDev. Each can use the environment that most directly meets his or her needs.

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