| Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference is expected to be a coming out party of sorts for the next version of Visual Studio, code-named Orcas. 
Primary among the new features in and new direction for Orcas will be advances in how the toolset handles data, sources said.
Data becomes "cool" in Orcas, said a source familiar with Microsoft's strategy for Orcas. "Data becomes a first-class citizen in the tool." 
Indeed, Anders Hejlsberg, Microsoft distinguished engineer and father of the C# language at Microsoft, will be delivering talks on just how this will work. 
Hejlsberg is scheduled to talk about the .Net Language Integrated Query Framework.  |