Developers Herald VS 2008, .Net Framework SP1

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Developers Herald VS 2008, .Net Framework SP1
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As Microsoft announces service pack releases of its Visual Studio2008 and .Net Framework 3.5 technology, developers say theenhancements make for faster, better development. Microsoft's newservice packs feature the .Net Framework Client Profile, ADO.NetData Services and ADO.Net Entity Framework.
Microsoft is releasing to manufacturing the .Net Framework 3.5 SP1(Service Pack 1) and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Aug. 11, and developershave weighed in saying the new offering enhances their capabilitiesfor building and delivering applications.
Although Microsoft is delivering new functionality in these servicepack releases, the offerings provide a host of advancements thatmight otherwise have been made into an entire new release, if not a"point" or "dot-one" release. Some early usersof the technology have been able to build functional projects basedon Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and .Net Framework 3.5 SP1, using themore model-driven aspects of the technology, among other things.
In an interview with eWeek, Shanku Niyogi, Microsoft product unitmanager for the technology, said the releases come nine monthsafter the release of the .Net Framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008and include a substantial number of updates based directly oncustomer feedback.
"With these SP1 releases, we're doing something a littledifferent," Niyogi said. "We're providing the typicalguidance, but we're also looking at customer feedback and the waypeople are building applications, and we're putting in buildingblocks to help them do that better. We're giving them a moremodel-driven approach to development."
The service packs include new features such as the .Net FrameworkClient Profile for faster deployment of Windows-based applications,multiple enhancements to ASP.Net, and support for databaseapplication development through the ADO.Net Entity Framework,ADO.Net Data Services and integration with SQL Server 2008.
"Another big area of focus is we're making data drivenapplications better and easier to build and to be flexible and ableto evolve over time," said Sam Gazitt, a product manager inthe Microsoft Developer Division.
"We're enabling developers to be able to build application[user interface] and customize that in a model-driven way,"Niyogi said.
Microsoft also is promoting more of a rapid application developmentscheme with the service pack releases, he said. "We're makingthe challenge of application development a much easier and quickerproposition."
The .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 includes several improvements to theMicrosoft CLR (Common Language Runtime), such as the ability togenerate managed code that improves application start-up time by 20to 45 percent and end-to-end application execution time up to 10percent, and the ability of managed code to take advantage of theASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) security feature inWindows Vista, Microsoft officials said. In addition, .NetFramework 3.5 SP1 has improvements for the creation of rich-clientapplications and line-of-business applications using WPF (WindowsPresentation Foundation).
Moreover, the .Net Framework 3.5, released in November 2007 , already contains features for developing Web 2.0 applications anddynamic Web sites, including new server controls and aclient-script library for AJAX-style applications. Yet with .NetFramework 3.5 SP1, the .Net Framework now offers support forASP.Net Dynamic Data, which provides a rich scaffolding frameworkthat allows rapid data-driven development without writing code.