Kicking off the second day of the Microsoft® Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2003, Microsoft Corp. gave PDC attendees prerelease versions of Visual Studio®, code-named "Whidbey," and SQL Server, code-named "Yukon," the next versions of Microsoft"s development tools and database. These releases center on continued advancements in developer productivity, making Web services easier and more powerful, and simplifying data access and management by taking advantage of the latest in Extensible Markup Language (XML) and managed code technologies. Microsoft expects beta versions of these products to be widely available to MSDN® Universal subscribers in 2004.
"We are focused on making information easier to find, organize and act on, and at the same time on making developers as productive as possible building connected and information-driven applications," said Eric Rudder, senior vice president of Servers and Tools at Microsoft. "With these new products on the horizon, we are enabling customers to succeed today while getting ready for technology that will help enable new opportunities in the long term."