Visual Studio for Applications (VSA)

[Diego Diaz]

Hello,

I've been taking a look at the new version of MSOffice
(2003) and it looks nice. Nevertheless, I've been
surprised that I had missunderstood about how it would
integrate with .NET. I was expecting to see VSA IDE
(Visual Studio for Applications) in Office 2003 starting
to replace VBA's IDE. However, Office 2003 Developers
Tools are aimed to existing users of Visual Studio.NET
whereas less advanced users/programmers familiar with
Macros have only the old VBA available. I've been
researching about VSA but I haven't quite understood
Microsoft's intend with it.

* Will it be available as an IDE at some point in
MSOffice?
* How can other companies redistribute it as an IDE for
their own .NET-based APIs? At that respect I saw that
Microsoft is pushing the Visual Studio Industry Partner
Program. Does it include VSA? Or is it a separate thing?

I appreciate any clarification on these questions,

Thanks,

Diego Diaz

 

[Jonathan West]

Hello,

I've been taking a look at the new version of MSOffice
(2003) and it looks nice. Nevertheless, I've been
surprised that I had missunderstood about how it would
integrate with .NET. I was expecting to see VSA IDE
(Visual Studio for Applications) in Office 2003 starting
to replace VBA's IDE. However, Office 2003 Developers
Tools are aimed to existing users of Visual Studio.NET
whereas less advanced users/programmers familiar with
Macros have only the old VBA available. I've been
researching about VSA but I haven't quite understood
Microsoft's intend with it.

* Will it be available as an IDE at some point in
MSOffice?

Nobody knows. I suspect that applies as much within Microsoft as outside.
All we can do is speculate at the moment, in the absence of an announcement
from Microsoft.

(I would also take exception to your assumption that VBA is intended only

* How can other companies redistribute it as an IDE for
their own .NET-based APIs?

I believe there is a licensing scheme offered by Microsoft, but when I took
a look at their website, I couldn't find any details.

At that respect I saw that
Microsoft is pushing the Visual Studio Industry Partner
Program. Does it include VSA? Or is it a separate thing?

I think it is a separate thing, but in the basence of good information on
the MS website, its hard to tell.

--
Regards
Jonathan West - Word MVP
MultiLinker - Automated generation of hyperlinks in Word
Conversion to PDF & HTML
http://www.multilinker.com

 

[Wei-Dong Xu [MSFT]]

Hi Diego,

It's too early to comment on what features might be included in the next
version of Office.

Regarding redistributing the VSA IDE with your own .NET applications, VSA
has been moved into the Visual Studio Industry Partners program (VSIP) and
its now part of the VSIP SDK. You can find more information on the
licensing arrangements for VSIP at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/partners/.

Thanks,
Joel Alley,MCSD

 

[Mike Hernandez [MSFT]]

VSA is no longer part of the VSIP, although we are continuing to support
customers that already have VSA licenses. We are evaluating alternatives
for the next version of VSA. In the meantime, we recommend the following:

If you are looking just for runtime customization and you don’t need an IDE
you should use the ICodeCompiler interfaces in the .NET Framework.

If you need an IDE you should investigate integrating into Visual Studio
via the Visual Studio Industry Partner Program (http://www.vsipdev.com/).
We recently announced new levels of VSIP, including free access to the VSIP
SDK. Integrating into Visual Studio via VSIP offers a more complete
solution than VSA, offering WinForms and C# support for example, neither of
which is supplied by VSA.

We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work on our future
direction. We look forward to sharing more information with you as it
becomes available.

Mike Hernandez [MSFT]
Program Manager
Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System Team