December 15th, 2006
A (Microsoft) code name a day: Rosario
Even though more and more teams at Microsoft seem to be shying away from christening their fledgling products with good, old-fashioned code names – favoring the ever-so-boring “V.Next” designation instead — there are still some who are doing so.
Microsoft code names always have piqued my interest. They offer some great clues about the Redmondians’ development priorities, not to mention a better understanding of which future Microsoft products fit together, from a strategy standpoint.
Microsoft
code name
of the day:
Rosario
In honor of Microsoft code-name junkies everywhere, I’m going to feature one, random Microsoft code name per work day for the rest of this month. I’ll provide as much information as I’ve been able to unearth on each, and attempt to provide some context as to how the team chose the name and how the forthcoming technology fits into the Redmond product hierarchy.
Microsoft code name of the day: Rosario
Best guess on what it is: The version of Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) that will follow VSTS "Orcas"
Meaning/context of the code name: Rosario fits in with the Microsoft developer division's "islands" code-name theme. As I noted yesterday, the developer division has taken to using island names (Whidbey, Orcas, Hawaii) for the their tool suite releases. Orcas, the next version of Visual Studio, is due in 2007 or 2008. "Rosario" is the name of a resort on Orcas Island (which is part of the San Juan islands in the Pacific Northwest).
Back story: VSTS is a set of software-development life-cycle tools for teams of programmers. There are several components of VSTS: Team Foundation server, Team Edition for Architects; Team Edition for Testers; Team Edition for Developers and Team Edition for Database Professionals (fondly known as "DataDude" and which recently was released to manufacturing). More role-specific modules are expected in future versions of VSTS.
Additional info: Rosario is expected to focus heavily on beefing up the testing fucntionality of VSTS. Expect new features like work-item tracking to be added, according to Microsoft officials.
Anyone have any additional "Rosario" info to share? Or have another Microsoft code name you’ve been wondering about? Send it my way and I’ll do my best to track down some leads on what it might be.
And if you want to keep track of the full month's worth of Microsoft code names I end up posting, bookmark this "Microsoft Codenames" page.
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