Microsoft offers Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition for professional developers working alone or in small teams who build mission-critical, multi-tier applications. The Professional Edition expands on the Standard Edition feature set to include tools for remote server development and debugging, SQL Server 2005 development, and a full, unconstrained development environment.

Professional developers will enjoy unfettered access to the .NET Framework 2.0, a robust, fully functional development environment, support for creating tools that extend the Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment, and tools for creating multi-tier Windows and Web applications.

With Visual Studio 2005, professional developers can:

• Enjoy a complete development environment with comprehensive application development features
• Develop and debug multi-tier server applications from within the unified development environment
• Build solutions for SQL Server 2005 using integrated project types, deployment tools, and debugging features
• Build tools that extend the Visual Studio IDE using the Visual Studio SDK

System requirements

Requirements vary for different combinations of components within Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Professional Edition. To install Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition, we recommend:

• Computer with a 600 mhz or faster processor
• Visual Studio® 2005 Professional Edition can be installed on the following operating systems:

  Microsoft® Windows® 2000 with Service Pack 4,
  Microsoft® Windows® XP with Service Pack 2
  Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional x64 Edition (WOW)
  Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 with Service Pack 1
  Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003, x64 Editions (WOW)
  Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 R2
  Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 R2, x64 Editions (WOW)
  Microsoft® Windows Vista™

• 192 MB of RAM or more
• 2 GB of available hard-disk space
• DVD-ROM drive
• 1024x768 or higher-resolution display with 256 colors
• Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device