(June 6, 2003) - Microsoft's Tech Ed conference closes today, leaving the world of .NET development pretty much unchanged. Although the conference was well attended, no major announcements of any consequence to developers were made. Is this, perhaps, a sign that Microsoft is at a loss for further ways in which to enhance the .NET development experience? Is it, perhaps, time to look once again to the world of Java for thought leadership?

…perhaps not. Other vendors have leapt into the void left by Microsoft's silence. Borland, sembleWare, Sanctum, Identify, and Computer Associates stood out amongst exhibitors at this year's Tech Ed in terms of their announcements and new product offerings.

By now, you have probably all already heard about Borland's new C#Builder product. How many of you though, I wonder, realize that C#Builder is the only .NET IDE that directly supports creating and deploying ASP.NET solutions for http://www.asp.net/Projects/Cassini/Download/Default.aspx?tabindex=0&ta bid=1">Cassini? This way, you can actually send people ASP.NET applications for installation and use in non-connected environments, such as laptops - just like standard desktop applications!

sembleWare also unveiled a product called Visual Welder which is worth a look. It allows you to create .NET applications using graphics instead of code. The cool part is that the graphics, in this case, are 3-dimensional, moving graphics. I don't know about you - but that is certainly a lot more interesting to me than text!

Apparently, http://www.sanctuminc.com ">Sanctum's AppScan product has been in widespread use for several years. Their new AppScan DE product for Visual Studio .NET, though, allows developers to perform automated security scans of the code they are writing at development time. I can easily see where this could save an organization a lot of money, by allowing developers to fix problems before they arise.

Speaking of problems, I also happened to stop by http://www.identify.com ">Identify's booth - a company that specializes in dealing with problems in .NET code. Specifically, Identify creates "black box" software for .NET which allows you to record performance, internal, and UI data as a .NET application is being used. This way, if a bug occurs, you can play it back over-and-over again - rather than stumbling around trying to figure out how to reproduce it.

Last, but certainly not least, Computer Associates was showing off their latest Unicenter modules for .NET management. Unfortunately, the only module that I had time to see before running out the door to catch my shuttle to the airport was for managing Exchange Server 2003. Still - an impressive product, and certainly ahead of the curve, considering that Exchange Server 2003 has only just seen release of RC1!

I guess we'll just have to see what the Java crowd comes up with next week at JavaOne!