Winner of First Student XML Web Services announced

Microsoft Announces Winner of First Student XML Web Services Competition in New Zealand

AUCKLAND, New Zealand - Wednesday, 12 February, 2003 - Microsoft New Zealand today announced the winner of the country's first Microsoft Student XML Web services competition. Jason White, a Diploma of Computer Science student at the University of Auckland, developed the winning application: a multiplayer, online game that utilises a XML Web service to register players and remoting to allow them to communicate directly with each other. He will be flown to Beijing to take part in the regional final of the Microsoft Asia Student .NET competition, awarded by Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software Architect of Microsoft Corp, on 27 February, 2003.

Students from 11 Asia Pacific countries will compete for the title and stand to win the latest mobile devices, including the Tablet PC and Pocket PC, and the chance to attend and present at TechEd 2003, Microsoft Corp's annual technical education event held in Florida, United States, later this year.

This is the first time that Microsoft New Zealand has participated in the annual event, which is open to all tertiary IT students across the country. Entrants are required to develop new and innovative XML Web services - the future platform for Internet programming - on the Microsoft .NET Framework.

Jason White said that the opportunity to work with the latest Microsoft developer tools drew him to enter the competition.

"I first heard about Microsoft Visual Studio .NET at University and recognised its potential for the IT industry," said White. "The competition provided me with the chance to actually use these tools and gain practical experience in building XML Web Services before I even graduated. I found Web Services extremely easy and fast to develop using Visual Studio .NET and hope to apply the invaluable experience I've gained once I graduate later this year."

Tony Ward, Microsoft New Zealand Group Manager .NET Developer and Tools, said the company intends to run the competition again towards the end of this year.

"The competition is an excellent way for IT students to showcase their programming skills and learn how to develop XML Web services. Microsoft .NET is the next generation software platform based on XML Web services and we want to ensure that the local academic developer community also has access to these tools."

About the Student XML Web Services Competition

The Student XML Web services competition invites student to develop new XML Web services using either Microsoft Visual Studio .NET or the ASP.NET Web Matrix and built for running on the .NET framework. Students can enter the competition individually or in a group of up to three and can receive free access to these leading Microsoft developer tools if their department belongs to the Microsoft Developer Network's (MSDN) Academic Alliance. For more information on the next Student .NET competition, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/nz/studentscomp < http://www.microsoft.com/nz/studentscomp > . Microsoft also has a wide range of resources available to students who want to find out more about XML and enhance their skills in XML Web service development at www.microsoft.com/nz/studentscomp/links.mspx < http://www.microsoft.com/nz/studentscomp/links.mspx > .

About Microsoft Visual Studio .NET

Microsoft Visual Studio .NET is the rapid application development (RAD) tool for building next-generation Web applications and XML Web services. Visual Studio .NET empowers developers to design broad-reach Web applications for any device and any platform. In addition, Visual Studio .NET is fully integrated with the .NET Framework, which provides support for multiple programming languages and automatically handles many common programming tasks, freeing developers to rapidly create Web applications using their language of choice. Visual Studio .NET includes a single integrated development environment (IDE) with RAD features for building Web applications and middle-tier business logic, and RAD XML designers for working with data. More information about Visual Studio .NET can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/nextgen/default.asp

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