Visual Studio 97

Visual Studio 97 (codenamed "Boston") is the first major release of Visual Studio, released on 19 March 1997. This release bundles the existing Microsoft development environments, such as Visual Basic, C++, J++, or FoxPro.

Developer Studio
This release introduces Developer Studio, the common development environment, where the developer could interact with C++, Web, J++ or FoxPro applications and projects.

Visual InterDev
This release also introduces Visual InterDev, which was primarily used to create Web applications.

Visual Basic
Visual Basic now supports compiling native code, and ActiveX controls.

Visual FoxPro
Visual FoxPro now supports object-oriented programming, to visually develop highly-maintainable code. It also supports moving tables and databases to Oracle servers.

Visual J++
This release also introduces Visual J++, a way to develop and test Java applets and applications.