Which edition?

[Stephen Geard]

I need to get hold of a copy of C#.NET to begin upgrading a suite of VB6
programs I have written. I note there are two editions Standard and
Professional, I have been using the Professional edition of VB6. I need the
ability to write applications that access data in a central MS Access
database, and to be able to distribute the application across a network.
Which edition should I be using? I note the Professional edition appears to
be very expensive.

Steve Geard

[Peter Duniho]

Re: Which edition?

On Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:46:10 -0700, Stephen Geard <sdgeard@ozemai l.com.au>
wrote:

I need to get hold of a copy of C#.NET to begin upgrading a suite of VB6
programs I have written. I note there are two editions Standard and
Professional, I have been using the Professional edition of VB6. I need
the
ability to write applications that access data in a central MS Access
database, and to be able to distribute the application across a network.
Which edition should I be using?

It seems to me that for those features specifically, the Express version
might suffice. Of course, there are other differences you might care
about, but even Express allows using the database-specific classes, and
supports ClickOnce (network distribution).

Here's a link that summarizes the differences between each version:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vs2008/products/cc149003.aspx

For the most part, the feature differences I notice the most between
Express and the retail versions are in debugging support and code
refactoring. For unmanaged applications, lack of a resource editor in the
Express version can be significant.

The Professional version does include remote debugging as well as extended
database debugging support. So for your particular application, it's
possible those would be useful. I'll point out that for many of these
features, you rarely wind up using them, but for those moments when you
_do_ need them, even an extra $500 for the tool (the price difference
between Standard and Pro) is easily recouped in improved productivity.

If you can rule out completely any potential need for the extra features
in Pro, go with Standard, or even Express. But otherwise, the extra money
is almost always going to be money well-spent.

Pete