InformationWeek

Microsoft's Answer To Java

Product manager Cornelius Willis says the VB Script language could be the 'nice abstraction' that programmers are looking for

Cornelius Willis, group product manager for Internet development tools at Microsoft, discusses the future of the Visual Basic programming language with InformationWeek senior editor Rich Levin .

Is VB script microsoft's answer to sun's java?
We want to make sure Windows users can view all interesting content on the World Wide Web. We think some of that c ontent will be created using Java.

There are lots of tools for creating Windows applications. The idea that there's one language developed for interactive TV that's going to turn out to be a Windows development platform, and that edges everybody else out of the market, including Borland, Symantec, Powersoft, and Microsoft, is kind of a confused notion.

So you expect to see a variety of languages adapted to the java run-time model?
That's exactly right. As a tool vendor, success and your relationship with customers is dependent on continuing to provide them with new opportunities. [When] there's a new technology they need to "talk" to, you have to make sure that technology is part of the workbench you provide to them. If multimedia or the Internet comes along in a particular way, you want to deliver a nice abstraction for your programmers to talk to.

That's what success in the tools business is all about, and has been forever-plugging new functionality into your existing code base, so developers don't have to throw out what they know. Both the Web and Java are about platform independence. Will future versions of VB Script and, for that matter, Visual Basic, be available on other platforms, such as Apple's MacOS? We're certainly open to that.

Rumor has it that the next release of visual basic will support ocx development.
I will confirm for you that Visual Basic 5 will allow users to create OLE controls. It will be very fast and very easy to create them. You'll be able to do it in Basic. It will be a lot easier to create controls than writing Java [code] or any other C++ derivative.

So visual basic ocxs will be, in essence, visual basic applets?
You know how inside your [Web] page there is this Java thing? OCXs are hosted the same way. In fact, the mechanism for hosting is a W3 consortium standard that was announced on Dec. 9. The VB Script engine can talk to a Java applet or an OLE control in the same way.

What abo ut security? an ole control has operating system and memory access.
VB Script relates to OLE controls as JavaScript relates to Java applets. The embedded object is the Java applet, and JavaScript scripts that. There's a feature [in the Java interpreter] that is called "safety." In the intranet scenario, when you're distributing an application to users in your company, safety isn't as much of an issue. But we have to work on the safety, and on signing executables, so that when you're distributing over the Internet to strangers, the strangers know from whence the control came.

But you're right, the OLE control can talk to the full breadth of the Win32 API. You can talk to DirectX, you can talk to your Excel spreadsheet, you can talk to your [Quicken] Intuit checkbook. For [Windows developers], they need the full breadth of the Windows API to do the work they charge money for. The Java proposition is entirely different.

Will vb 5 deliver a native code compiler?
We' re going to make sure the performance of Visual Basic is world-class and highly competitive with anything on the market. If that means accelerating our forms package, we'll do that. If it means building native code compilation, we'll do that. If it means making the best, slimmest, fastest middleware to the server, we'll do that.

The real-world performance scenario that developers are struggling with now is how to get data out of the server database into the front-end. That's the bottleneck. And we kick the competition's butt in this. If you look at the benchmarks we published, we are very hot at getting data out of the server into the client. And that is the important performance scenario. Look at the data on our Web page.

When will vb 5 enter beta testing?
Certainly within this year. The next version of Visual Basic is hot-ridiculously hot.

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