Last week we released our Road Map for Essential Studio® 2012, Volume 4. Keeping with our standard of transparency, the Road Map details all features and significant additions that Volume 4 will bring, helping current customers plan future development projects, and letting prospective customers know our future plans so they can make an informed decision about our products.
We’ve laid out exactly what we’re going to do. The Road Map is built from requests made by our customers and ideas we have internally about the direction the company should head. We always spell everything out at the beginning of our release cycle so you know what to expect.
WinRT
Definitely the biggest deal happening in Volume 4 will be WinRT. By adding WinRT controls, we are basically creating a new suite of controls. Our most popular UI controls will be WinRT-ready by the release—we’re talking about Essential Grid, Tools, Chart, Diagram, Gauge, and Maps—and our reporting suite will have significant WinRT updates—specifically DocIO, PDF, and XlsIO.
ASP.NET MVC additions
Our MVC suite will add many enhancements across our UI and reporting controls. We’ll support MVC project templates in Visual Studio 2012 and Knockout.js for UI data binding. Our chart control will allow you to export to SVG format.
Our MVC suite will also add an RDL-based report viewer, extending our already substantial RDL support. You’ll also like our new MVC client that allows you to slice and dice OLAP data for business intelligence.
Theme updates
As we always do, we’ll provide our controls with the latest and greatest Microsoft themes. When you look at our controls after Volume 4, you’ll see Windows 8 styling, Windows Phone styles in our mobile controls, and throughout our UI offering, you’ll see support for the Office 2013 look and feel.
Compatibility
Volume 3 of this year added compatibility with Visual Studio 2012, and we continue our compatibility efforts in other areas as well. Our ASP.NET MVC and BI controls will be compatible with Internet Explorer 10, and our reporting studio will add support for Word and Excel 2013 formats.
Robust Reporting
Our reporting suite already has substantial support for SQL Server. Our next release promises to deliver even more supported data sources, including XML, ODBC, and OLE DB. You’ll also have access to SharePoint-hosted data, allowing you to generate reports that have greater complexity than what SharePoint alone offers. Also in Volume 4, you can expect support for stored procedures.
The release date is set
As of now, the release date is set for November 2. That means our release will ride on the heels of Microsoft’s launch of Windows 8. Both releases will mark a new approach to development: one where UIs are designed for mobile, touch-enabled environments.
When that time comes, and people begin to understand and design under the new Windows UI paradigm, Syncfusion controls will be ready at your disposal—already tested, and always well-supported.