Visual Studio SDK
The Visual Studio SDK provides enhanced extensibility functionality for the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE). The Visual Studio SDK includes a comprehensive set of extensibility and automation assemblies and libraries, source code, and sample code to let you automate and extend nearly every facet of Visual Studio. These areas include: the editor, the debugger, tool windows, toolbars, language services, projects, Help, source code control, and more.
The Visual Studio SDK is a superset of the Visual Studio automation object model, which is a set of interfaces that is included in Visual Studio and provides basic programmatic access to many elements of the IDE. For more information about the Visual Studio automation model, see Extending the Visual Studio Environment.
The Visual Studio Extensibility Developer Center on the MSDN Web site offers the latest news and information about Visual Studio extensibility. You can also download the latest Visual Studio SDK release.
In the Visual Studio Documentation
Debug Interface Access SDK Reference
Documents the Debug Interface Access (DIA) API, which is used to access debug information in program database (.pdb) files that are generated by Microsoft post-compiler tools. You can use it to develop applications that report stack trace-back information and analyze performance data.
Additional Information
Microsoft .NET Framework Developer Center on the MSDN Web site
Offers the latest news, information, and downloads for the .NET Framework, as well as tools, documentation, and programming guidance. It explains how to take advantage of the common language runtime (CLR) to create objects that interact across multiple programming languages. The CLR also automates repetitive tasks, such as object lifetime management and garbage collection.
Describes how to add programmatic security features, such as session encryption, public and private key encryption, and digital certificate authentication and management, to your applications.
The WDK provides the tools and information you need to develop drivers that can run on the latest Microsoft operating systems, including Microsoft Vista.