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Decision Points for Selecting a Visual Studio 2005 Licensing Option
As you'll see, you can choose from many different ways to buy Visual Studio 2005. In this section of the Guide, we'll offer advice about factors that should influence your decision.
Naturally, not all factors apply to every user.
Differences Between Editions
Visual Studio 2005 comes in five major versions:
- Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions
- Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition
- Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition
- Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the Microsoft Office System
- Visual Studio 2005 Team System
Each of these editions of the product has different features. For example, the Express Editions do not support the source code control interface that allows you to use Microsoft Visual SourceSafe or other source code control providers, and the Team System is the only version that includes code profiling and unit testing tools. Microsoft has provided a handy Visual Studio 2005 Product Line Overview comparison chart to let you quickly compare the features of the various editions so that you can make an informed decision. We'll discuss the differences between these editions in more depth later in this Guide.
Team Size and Structure
If you're managing .NET projects involving large teams of architects, developers, and testers, and you have not yet made a major investment in any application lifecycle management tools, you're in the target market for Visual Studio Team System. Ideally, Team System should contribute enough efficiency to your process to give you a reasonable return on the rather substantial investment that it represents. This is a serious decision and you should do some serious research before going the Team System route.
Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 gives you an opportunity to try the full Team System for free, which will help you determine whether it will fit in with your way of working. Microsoft has also published an immense amount of information at the Team System Web site.
Other Resources
Visual Studio 2005 is an excellent development environment, but it does not exist in a vacuum. Depending on the type of applications that you are developing, you may find that you need other software (such as SQL Server, Exchange Server, or various versions of Windows) to test with, or technical information to help you solve problems. Providing these resources is the goal of the various MSDN subscriptions. This Guide will help you understand which software is included at the various subscription levels, as well as their comparative prices.
Be sure you understand the license limitations before purchasing an MSDN subscription. With a few exceptions, the software in an MSDN subscription is not licensed for production use, only for development and testing. You'll need other licenses for such purposes as running your corporate e-mail server and installing Windows for the clerical staff.
Roles
If you opt to acquire one of the Team Editions (Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Testers, Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Developers, or Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Architects), you'll need to pick the appropriate edition for your role in the organization. Although Microsoft has used "Architect" in the past to indicate the version of a product that contains all of the tools, this is no longer the case; the Architect edition is not a superset of the Tester or Developer editions.
Rather, each edition contains tools targeted at the special needs of one role. If your duties cross two or all three of the roles and you want all of the tools, you'll need to move up to the full Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite product (at roughly twice the cost of any of the Team Editions).