Today it was announced (in the MSDN Update for MSDN Subscribers) that we will be merging the Development and Database Editions of Visual Studio into a single SKU in Visual Studio Team System 2010* version (*not necessarily final name).

This builds on the current promotion that we’ve had in place for a month or so where Team Development and Team Database subscribers have had access to both SKUs since October 2008.

The full blurb follows:

In the next release of Visual Studio Team System we will be merging the feature sets of the Development Edition and the Database Edition into a single product. The new product will include all of the features in the Development Edition and the Database Edition as well as new capabilities delivering even more value in a single product. This will provide a more complete set of capabilities for building software in today’s data-driven environments. Bringing these two feature sets together enables you to take advantage of the core tools for application development as well as the necessary tools for database development, including performance profiling, code analysis, code metrics, code coverage, database refactoring, Schema Compare, Data Compare, and more.

As an MSDN subscriber we want you to realize the benefit of this merged feature set now, which is why we are extending this exclusive offer. Since October 1, 2008 you have access to both the Development Edition and Database Edition through MSDN Subscriber Downloads.

 

This represents good value for those interested in stepping up from VS Pro to one of the team suites which we still have a 30% promo going on.  Check it out here.

Last week we announced changes to our Business Intelligence roadmap.  In short this means that we are progressing with our vision to empower all users with Business Intelligence capabilities by migrating the scorecarding, dashboard and analytics functions of PerformancePoint Server into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server in the Office 14 wave and discontinuing investment in PerformancePoint Server beyond Service pack 3 for PerformancePoint Server 2007.

For more details on this announcement, I encourage you to watch this short video (5:19) by Guy Weismantel, the director of Microsoft Business Intelligence.  Also have a read of the announcement on the BI blog here.

I have a couple of domain names for sale… windowsperformanceindex.com and vistaperformanceindex.com.

The original idea I had was to put up a website where anyone could log in, put up their computer configuration and their performance index rating so that we could match components that provide best performance for the dollar, which would make it easy to build a high performance computer. If you’re a developer, this would be a simple site to build, and easy for most people to “grok”.

Bid here.  Happy bidding!