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Visual Studio 2019 Enterprise Edition Is Having Advantages Over Professional. Here Are They

Visual Studio 2019 Enterprise edition has advantages over Professional including additional features focused on software architects. Key exclusive Enterprise features include architectural validation and analysis, code duplication detection, advanced debugging like IntelliTrace, code map debugger integration, and memory dump analysis. Enterprise also has more robust testing tools than Professional like live unit testing, test coverage metrics, Microsoft Fakes for isolation, automated UI testing, and the Microsoft Test Manager for manual testing. While Professional is sufficient for most developers, Enterprise may be preferable for software architects if the budget allows due to its expanded feature set focused on architecture and testing.

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53 views8 pages

Visual Studio 2019 Enterprise Edition Is Having Advantages Over Professional. Here Are They

Visual Studio 2019 Enterprise edition has advantages over Professional including additional features focused on software architects. Key exclusive Enterprise features include architectural validation and analysis, code duplication detection, advanced debugging like IntelliTrace, code map debugger integration, and memory dump analysis. Enterprise also has more robust testing tools than Professional like live unit testing, test coverage metrics, Microsoft Fakes for isolation, automated UI testing, and the Microsoft Test Manager for manual testing. While Professional is sufficient for most developers, Enterprise may be preferable for software architects if the budget allows due to its expanded feature set focused on architecture and testing.

Uploaded by

bsreedharan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Visual Studio 2019 Enterprise edition is having advantages over Professional.

Here are they:


Enterprise vs. Professional: Which One Is the Right Visual
Studio for You?
To understand the differences between the professional and enterprise editions of Visual Studio,
you must first keep in mind that Microsoft offers the IDE in a tiered fashion.

1. Visual Studio Community is the least expensive (it’s free).

2. Next is Visual Studio Professional.

3. And, finally, Visual Studio Enterprise is the most feature-rich and most expensive.

Each edition has all of the features of the edition below it, plus additional ones.

So the question “what are the differences between Visual Studio Enterprise and Professional”
really amounts to what the former can do that the latter can’t. So, we’ll look at that.

Features that Only Visual Studio Enterprise Has


Let’s see the exclusive features from Visual Studio Enterprise, broken down in categories.

1. Integrated Development Environment Features


We’ll start by covering features related to the IDE itself. Visual Studio Enterprise has a particular
focus on software architects so this edition obviously has several features related to software
architecture.

1A. Architectural Validation and Analysis

Picture this scenario.


You’re developing an application that follows the n-layered architectural pattern. So you’d like to
prevent the presentation layer from accessing the data layer directly. You’d want to allow it to only
access the business logic layer.

Since the 2010 version of Visual Studio Enterprise, it’s possible to perform architectural
validation on an app using architectural layer diagrams. You could integrate said validation in
your build process, for instance. If a class referenced a namespace in some layer it wasn’t
supposed to access, the build would fail.

In the latest version, this feature was also improved to offer live dependency validation. Instead of
having to wait for the build to break, Visual Studio, employing the power of Roslyn analyzers, will
give you real-time feedback whenever you’re about to introduce an invalid dependency.

NDepend Dependency Graph and Dependency Matrix

1B. Code Duplication Detection

Code duplication is one of the worst problems in a code base. Visual Studio Enterprise can help
developers and architects out there deal with this problem with a convenient feature: code clones
analysis. With this feature, Visual Studio can localize possible code duplicates so that you can
eliminate them.

2. Advanced Debugging and Diagnostics


Developers spend a considerable amount of time in the debugger. So let’s check out the exclusive

Visual Studio Enterprise features for this domain.

The first feature here is IntelliTrace. Instead of the traditional, present-time


debugging, IntelliTrace allows you to debug a past execution of your app. You can save
IntelliTrace data from a lot of different sources, including a deployed app in the production!

Also in the debugging domain, we have Code Map debugger integration.

This feature offers a new type of experience when debugging by allowing you to visualize the
current method—and also the previous methods called—as diagrams that integrate with the
debugger and update in real time as you step through your code.

Finally, we get to .NET Memory Dump Analysis. This feature allows you to analyze memory
dump files to identify and fix performance problems, such as memory leaks or unnecessary
allocations.

3. Testing Tools
We’re finally at testing tools. This area is, hands down, the one where Visual Studio Enterprise
outshines the other editions of the IDE. We’ll begin by talking about some of the features related to
automated unit tests and then proceed to cover features that can help with manual, exploratory,
and UI tests.

3A. Automated Tests

Unit Testing

Let’s start with Live Unit Testing.


When you enable this feature, Visual Studio
will automatically run unit tests impacted by the changes you’ve just made to your application and
present the results to you in real time. This feature supports the NUnit, xUnit.net, and MSTest
frameworks.

Since we’re talking about unit testing, let’s now turn our attention to a topic that is sure to stir up
some controversy: test coverage.

Maybe you think that getting to 100% of code coverage is vital to an application’s health, or
perhaps you don’t. But you’d most likely agree that knowing the test coverage data is useful
nonetheless. Visual Studio Enterprise offers you this metric natively.

When you’re aiming to write good unit tests, a goal you should always strive for is isolation. A good
unit test should be kept as separate and independent as possible, not only from other tests but
also from infrastructure concerns. Details such as the machine’s clock or language shouldn’t
interfere with the test’s result.

Providing such isolation isn’t always easy though. Visual Studio Enterprise tries to solve that
problem with Microsoft Fakes.

Microsoft Fakes allows you to use stubs and shims to simulate external dependencies in your
code.

A classical use case for that would be to simulate a specific date to test for a time-sensitive bug.
Visual Studio Enterprise can go beyond even that. Through IntelliTest, it’s possible to
automatically generate a unit test suite for your code, along with fake test data.

Automated UI Tests

What about automated tests that aren’t unit tests?

Visual Studio Enterprise can cater to those needs as well. With coded UI testing, you can create
automated tests that drive the application through its user interface. You’d do that by recording a
manual test and saving it. After the test is recorded, you can specify values for parameters and
fine-tune it using a special editor.
3B. Manual Tests

A code base should not live on automated tests alone though. Manual tests are still a vital part of a
comprehensive quality strategy, and Visual Studio Enterprise can cater to those needs as well.

And the primary tool used to do that is the Microsoft Test Manager, which is a comprehensive
solution that allows its user to complete the following tasks:

 record and replay actions performed during exploratory (i.e., unscripted) test sessions

 create and manage test plans for manual tests

 copy test suites and test cases across many projects

 record and collect data about planned manual testing sessions

By employing this feature, a developer, tester, or test analyst can have a very wide view on what’s
happening on the project, test-wise. Think of it as a centralized control panel on all things test-
related.

Visual Studio Professional Vs. Visual Studio Enterprise: The


Verdict
Microsoft offers Visual Studio under a tiered offerings model. So, analyzing the differences
between Visual Studio Professional and Visual Studio Enterprise (respectively the second and
third tiers) amounts to covering the characteristics present in the latter but absent in the former.
And that’s what we’ve done in this post.

Sure, we haven’t mentioned all of the exclusive features in Visual Studio Enterprise, for brevity’s
sake. But I’m confident that the article made clear that Visual Studio Enterprise is aimed primarily
at software architects and QA experts.

So, what’s the verdict?

I’d say you can’t go wrong with Visual Studio Professional. It’s an excellent choice for most
developers. For software architects though, Visual Studio Enterprise might make sense, as long as
you have plenty of budget.  But if you don’t, a lot of plugins in the Visual Studio ecosystem can
help you get VS Enterprise’s features in ala carte fashion.

Conclusion” Based on the aforementioned points, you can choose either Professional or
Enterprise. Professional will also can work well but all features are covered with Enterprise.Based
on the requirement and scope we can decide either one.

Thank You!

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