ComponentOne, a provider of productivity tools for Microsoft Visual Studio and SharePoint developers, has released Studio Enterprise 2011 v3, the latest version of its data and UI control suite, which includes the new Studio for Entity Framework, a solution that extends ADO.NET Entity Framework.

Greg Lutz, product manager at ComponentOne, stated in his blog post about Studio for Entity Framework that "Our design-time components make it easy for any level of .NET developer to work with Entity Framework and the virtual mode feature improves performance for even the largest dataset." Lutz also said that the built-in smart client caching in Studio for Entity Framework can help speed up development and reduce the amount of code devs need to write for Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and Silverlight applications.

Setting up data binding in ComponentOne Studio for Entity Framework

Also included in Studio Enterprise 2011 v3 are a number of new controls and components. ComponentOne's Studio for ASP.NET Wijmo suite includes new Web UI controls (The Wijmo suite, ComponentOne's HTML5 and jQuery framework, is part of Studio Enterprise.) These controls include new HTML5 Gauge controls powered by Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and Wijmo, which provide easy customization, built-in animation, transitions, themes, and tooltips.

ComponentOne has ported its text editor, Editor for ASP.NET to be HTML5 and JavaScript-compliant by using Wijmo and expanded its HTML5 chart collection in this release with the addition of four new chart types: Area, Bubble, Composite, and Scatter. There's also a new Composite Chart control, which allows developers to easily create dashboards on a single chart surface. All charts render correctly in older browsers like IE6 without any loss in quality and can also be used on mobile devices like iPads and iPhones.

Additionally, ComponentOne announced that ComponentOne Reports for .NET Designer Edition, a report-creation tool, is now part of ComponentOne Reports for WinForms inside Studio for WinForms. Reports for .NET Designer Edition includes ComponentOne Reports, which provides the report generating component, C1Report, several print preview controls for displaying reports, and a report scheduler application; C1ReportDesigner; and the report designer source code.

Free 30-day trials of ComponentOne products are available on the company's website. Pricing for Studio Enterprise starts at $1495.