<P> VSTA is included with Microsoft Office 2007 for use by end - users and business application developers, and the SDK is available separately for ISVs . It is however integrated in Microsoft InfoPath only, as other applications in the suite use Visual Basic for Applications instead . </P> <P> Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) is based on the . NET Framework and is built on the same architecture as Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO). Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Applications is based on the . NET 2.0 framework and Visual Studio 2005, while Visual Studio Tools for Applications v 2.0 is based on the . NET 3.5 SP1 framework and Visual Studio 2008 . Some of the technology developed for Visual Studio for Application (VSA) was incorporated within Visual Studio Tools for Applications . </P> <P> Visual Studio Tools for Applications consists of both a runtime and design time environment or IDE . The runtime is used by host applications to expose their object models to add - ins as well as discover and load add - ins . Add - ins have access to the host object model through a proxy which utilizes the VSTA runtime, or alternatively add - ins can directly reference the host application . The IDE is a streamlined and customizable version of the Visual Studio IDE - Visual Studio 2005 for VSTA 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 for VSTA 2.0 . It supports Visual Basic . Net and C#. The IDE can be customized to add or hide functionality . This makes it ideal for professional developers as well as power users and other end users who may have a more macro recording oriented coding style . Visual Studio Tools for Applications also features 64 - bit support and macro recording of the host application, but does not incorporate Active Scripting support . In order to integrate VSTA into a host application the SDK is needed, to distribute VSTA with an application a license and the VSTA distributable is required . </P> <P> VSTA 2008 integration licenses were distributed by Summit Software, which entered into a licensing agreement with Microsoft in April 2006 . Independent software vendors (ISVs) wishing to integrate VSTA into their applications must pay a license fee to Summit Software that is calculated either on a $50 per - seat basis or on the basis of a 1%, 2% or 3% royalty depending on the products' revenue . </P>

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