SAN DIEGO, Calif. – Aug. 1st, 2006 – San Diego, CA based Vista Software today announced the Community Technology Preview public release of the world's first fully managed and typesafe SQL database engine for the Microsoft .NET Framework, Compact Framework and Mono environments. VistaDB 3.0 enables software developers to build fully managed WinForms and ASP.NET database applications that target desktops, mobile devices and web servers.

"VistaDB 3.0 addresses a big need for programmers developing small to midsize database applications based on Microsoft's .NET Framework, Compact Framework and Mono." stated Anthony Carrabino, President and CEO of Vista Software. "We are very happy to deliver a solution that enables developers to build database applications that run natively on these managed environments and of course on Windows Vista. We are looking forward to the opportunity to continue working with Microsoft in this space as we expect VistaDB 3.0 to play a significant role in the .NET marketplace."

The SQL databases available for the .NET Framework today, including Microsoft SQL Server 2005, SQL Everywhere, MySQL and Firebird are all based on unmanaged architectures. Therefore when developers create .NET Framework-based applications that embed any of these SQL databases today, the result is an unmanaged application that does not conform to Microsoft's guidelines. VistaDB 3.0 changes this by enabling developers to build fully managed .NET Framework-based SQL database applications that can run natively on desktops, mobile devices and web servers.

According to Brad Abrams, who is a founding member of the Common Language Runtime (CLR) and .NET Framework teams at Microsoft Corp. and the author of several .NET books, "The .NET Framework in general and managed code in specific help shape Microsoft's direction for the programming model that will be used for developing nearly all Windows-based applications."

Carrabino went on to say that VistaDB 3.0 was not ported from their existing VistaDB 2.x code base, but rather was designed and developed from scratch to take full advantage of the features provided by Microsoft's Visual C# language and of the classes in the .NET Framework itself. "There was no way to achieve this level of integration with the .NET Framework and Compact Framework without a complete redesign and rewrite," stated Carrabino. "We were forced to rethink everything to be in line with Microsoft's managed and typesafe strategy."

VistaDB 3.0 Features

VistaDB 3.0 features the following:

  • Fully managed and typesafe single assembly developed in Visual C#
  • Small 600KB embedded footprint
  • Microsoft SQL Server T-SQL compatible SQL syntax
  • Managed ADO.NET Provider
  • Supports building WinForms and ASP.NET database applications
  • Supports the Microsoft .NET Framework, Compact Framework, Windows Vista and Mono
  • Unicode support
  • Snapshot Isolation level transaction processing that eliminates deadlocks
  • 4TB of storage per database
  • Direct Data Access™ objects for high-speed live cursor support
  • Deep integration into the Visual Studio 2005 IDE including support for Server Explorer
  • Managed Data Builder tool allows developers to visually create and manage databases
  • Managed Data Migration Wizard migrates existing databases to VistaDB format
  • Royalty free distribution

Other features expected in the final release include hosting of the .NET Framework Common Language Runtime (CLR) and StoredCode™, which allows procedures developed using Visual C# and Microsoft Visual Basic .NET to be stored and run from within a VistaDB database at runtime, Views and classic Stored Procedures.

Official pricing for VistaDB 3.0 has been set at $349 per developer for new customers with upgrade pricing for existing VistaDB 2.0 customers set at $249 per developer. While in pre-release mode, new customers can buy VistaDB 3.0 for $249 and existing customer can upgrade for $149.

Why Managed Code Is So Important

To appreciate the significance of VistaDB 3.0 one must understand the importance of managed and type-safe code within the Microsoft .NET Framework. These two new programming concepts are core to the Microsoft .NET Framework technology. Managed code represents source code that executes within the .NET Framework memory space and that is managed entirely by the CLR. Managed applications let the CLR protect a computer or device by preventing rogue and malicious code from directly accessing a computer's resources such as memory or hard disks where damage can be done. Typesafe means that an application uses native data types from the .NET Framework , which further ensures safe operation.

Beyond the definitions, the CLR is able to inspect managed application code in great detail before actually running the code, which allows the .NET Framework to determine how much protection to provide for the application or whether to run it at all. In sharp contrast to this, unmanaged applications cannot be inspected or verified to be safe by the CLR before actually running them. The CLR doesn't know what an unmanaged application will do upon inspection and therefore cannot guarantee what will happen when the application runs. This makes unmanaged applications from unknown sources very dangerous to run. One long term benefit from the development of managed .NET Framework-based applications is the reduction of the number of malicious applications and viruses. The new VistaDB 3.0 provides .NET developers with an important technology for building fully managed database applications.

About Vista Software

Founded in southern California in April 1999, Vista Software specializes in building high performance SQL database engines that are used by software developers to build robust database applications.

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