Chapter 2

Choosing the Right Tools for the Job

This chapter looks at the role of each Microsoft^® Visual Studio™ development tool in application development. In addition to building Microsoft^® Windows applications, Visual Studio 6.0 can help you:

• Build applications fast.
• Build applications for the Web.
• Build data-centric applications.

Many features of the Visual Studio tools are specifically designed to help you with these tasks. This chapter looks at what these tools offer for building any application faster, for building Web applications, and for building data-centric applications.

What This Chapter Won't Tell You

This chapter will not recommend one tool over another. The factors that influence your choice of tools are varied and specific to each individual. Besides, the right tool for one person to use in building a Web application will not be the best choice for another person building the exact same kind of Web application. Why? Because of intangible but highly important factors such as:

• Developer resources   This is perhaps the single most important factor. If you have a staff of experienced Microsoft^® Visual Basic^® developers, for example, you'll want to work to their strength. Expecting them to switch to a new tool and to become competent overnight might not be realistic.
• Available time   On most development projects, time is of the essence. You might want to devote time to designing and testing a great application, not to learning the tools necessary to designing and testing that application.

In the end, choosing a development tool depends as much on business needs and developer resources as it does on the feature set of any given tool. The sections in this chapter point out the strengths of each tool.