Microsoft has turned its back on Java development by canning its Visual J++ 6 programming tool.

News of the demise of Visual J++ is being linked to Microsoft's latest announcement of 'programming the web' using Web language XML as the lingua franca.

Senior Microsoft developer product managers have told Computing that when the company ships its development suite Visual Studio 7 late next year, there is a "great probability that Visual J++ won't be there."

Microsoft has not totally pulled the plug on the Java tool, however. It has instead signed a deal for rival tools vendor Rational Software to continue development of Visual J++.

Richard Hamblen, developer tools product manager at Microsoft UK, said the Rational deal is "great news for developers because of the strength of the company's Java technology offering which is not hampered legally or technically like Microsoft's Java offering."

The Seattle software giant does not fully endorse the so-called write-once-run-anywhere basis of Java as defined by Sun Microsystems. As a result, Visual J++ focuses on the Windows platform. After a legal battle with Sun, Microsoft was forced to remove a Java logo from packaging and documentation for Visual J++.

Mike Cowler, a Java developer in the City of London, said the sale of Visual J++ is disappointing.

"Most serious Java developers use other tools to gain cross-platform capability, but J++ is a nice tool and has gained some popularity," he said.

Separately, Computing has been given an early preview of Visual Studio 7, which is heavily biased towards XML, formally called extensible mark-up language.

XML will allow software written to Microsoft's Com object model to interact with non-Windows objects. In essence, Microsoft is replacing the DCOM RPC messaging technology with an XML/HTTP technology that allows for remote method invocation.