VisualStudio version recommendations

[JamesCrandall]

I've read Visual Studio Express cannot start external applications for debugging, which this is not acceptable.  Trying to decide on the most economical recommendation for a customer.  So which version of VS is most economical yet will provide adequate development tools?

Standard? 
Professional?

Work will be done to develop .dll's for ArcGIS v10 (ArcMap toolbars), ADO.NET, SQLServer connections.

[RuchiraWelikala]

If you're talking about starting ArcMap (or Catalog, etc) then Express 2008 works just fine.  Debugs, step into, step through..it's all there.  The only real problem I have is building a deployment package.  Professional or standard is required for that (I think).

[JamesCrandall]

If you're talking about starting ArcMap (or Catalog, etc) then Express 2008 works just fine.  Debugs, step into, step through..it's all there.  The only real problem I have is building a deployment package.  Professional or standard is required for that (I think).

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, I was concerned regarding Express because there is an exerpt in the ESRI docs that suggested you could not launch external programs (ArcMap.exe) to debug the code (VB.NET).  Either way, we def need to build deployment packages, so if anyone has a bit more info about Professional Vs. Standard versons that'd be great.

james

[NeilClemmons]

One thing to keep in mind before you spend any money is that Microsoft is dropping the out-of-the-box deployment project template in the next release of Visual Studio.  The last version to include the deployment project template will be Visual Studio 2010.  Future versions will include a "lite" version of InstallShield.