Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) is a set of tools that

independent software vendor An independent software vendor (ISV), also known as a software publisher, is an organization specializing in making and selling software, as opposed to computer hardware, designed for mass or niche markets. This is in contrast to in-house software, ...

s (ISVs) can use to build customization abilities into their applications for both automation and extensibility. Those customization abilities can be used by end-users to tailor the ISV's application within a managed extensibility environment just like

Visual Basic for Applications Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is an implementation of Microsoft's event-driven programming language Visual Basic 6.0 built into most desktop Microsoft Office applications. Although based on pre-.NET Visual Basic, which is no longer support ...

History

Visual Studio Tools for Applications was announced by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

with the release of

Visual Studio 2005 Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms such ...

. The first Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Visual Studio for Application was released in April 2006. Version 1.0 was

released to manufacturing A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

along with

Office 2007 Microsoft Office 2007 (codenamed Office 12) is an office suite for Windows, developed and published by Microsoft. It was officially revealed on March 9, 2006 and was the 12th version of Microsoft Office. It was released to manufacturing on Novemb ...

. Visual Studio Tools for Applications 2.0 is the current version. The second version of Visual Studio Tools for Applications includes features such as the Dynamic Programming Model and support for WPF, WCF, WF,

LINQ Language Integrated Query (LINQ, pronounced "link") is a Microsoft .NET Framework component that adds native data querying capabilities to .NET languages, originally released as a major part of .NET Framework 3.5 in 2007. LINQ extends the langu ...

, and

.NET Framework 3.5 Microsoft started development on the .NET Framework in the late 1990s originally under the name of Next Generation Windows Services (NGWS). By late 2001 the first beta versions of .NET 1.0 were released. The first version of .NET Framework was r ...

. VSTA is included with

Microsoft Office 2007 Microsoft Office 2007 (codenamed Office 12) is an office suite for Windows, developed and published by Microsoft. It was officially revealed on March 9, 2006 and was the 12th version of Microsoft Office. It was released to manufacturing on Novem ...

for use by end-users and business application developers, and the SDK is available separately for ISVs. It is however integrated in

Microsoft InfoPath Microsoft InfoPath is a software application for designing, distributing, filling and submitting electronic forms containing structured data. Microsoft initially released InfoPath as part of the Microsoft Office 2003 family. The product features ...

only, as other applications in the suite use Visual Basic for Applications instead.

Architecture

Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) is based on the .NET Framework and is built on the same architecture as

Visual Studio Tools for Office Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) is a set of development tools available in the form of a Visual Studio add-in (project templates) and a runtime that allows Microsoft Office 2003 and later versions of Office applications to host the .NET Fra ...

(VSTO). Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Applications is based on the .NET 2.0 framework and Visual Studio 2005, while Visual Studio Tools for Applications v 2.0 is based on the .NET 3.5 SP1 framework and Visual Studio 2008. Some of the technology developed for ''Visual Studio for Application'' (VSA) was incorporated within Visual Studio Tools for Applications. Visual Studio Tools for Applications consists of both a runtime and design time environment or IDE. The runtime is used by host applications to expose their object models to add-ins as well as discover and load add-ins. Add-ins have access to the host object model through a proxy which utilizes the VSTA runtime, or alternatively add-ins can directly reference the host application. The IDE is a streamlined and customizable version of the Visual Studio IDE- Visual Studio 2005 for VSTA 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 for VSTA 2.0. It supports Visual Basic .Net and C#. The IDE can be customized to add or hide functionality. This makes it ideal for professional developers as well as power users and other end users who may have a more macro recording oriented coding style. Visual Studio Tools for Applications also features 64-bit support and macro recording of the host application, but does not incorporate

Active Scripting Active Scripting (formerly known as ActiveX Scripting) is the technology used in Windows to implement component-based scripting support. It is based on OLE Automation (part of COM) and allows installation of additional scripting engines in the form ...

support. In order to integrate VSTA into a host application the SDK is needed, to distribute VSTA with an application a license and the VSTA distributable is required.

Licensing

VSTA 2008 integration licenses were distributed by Summit Software, which entered into a licensing agreement with Microsoft in April 2006. Independent software vendors (ISVs) wishing to integrate VSTA into their applications must pay a license fee to Summit Software that is calculated either on a $50 per-seat basis or on the basis of a 1%, 2% or 3% royalty depending on the products' revenue.

References

External links

VSTA team blog

VSTA Fact Sheet

VSTO Embraces MAF

Microsoft resource site
{{Microsoft development tools Tools For Applications