Microsoft has halted development of Visual J++, a Java version of its Visual programming tool.

The Redmond giant will instead ship a Java tool made by software developer Rational as part of its forthcoming Visual Studio.Net developer suite. The suite will be used by developers to create applications based on Microsoft's recently outlined .Net strategy.

The news that Visual J++ will not be included in the Visual Studio suite emerged yesterday on the first day of Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference in Florida. The software giant's executives used to conference to trumpet Microsoft's .Net strategy and unveil a beta version of the VisualStudio.Net suite.

Paul Maritz, Microsoft's group vice president of platforms, told delegates that developers will be able to use Visual Studio.Net to create web-based services with as much 'drag-and-drop' ease as Visual Basic did for developers of graphical software for the PC.

Visual Studio.Net will support C# (C Sharp), Microsoft's latest object-oriented development language which it is promoting as a competitor to Java. The suite also includes Common Language Runtime, a new set of services shared by Visual Basic and C++.