Visual Studio 2008, .NET Framework 3.5

Havenstein, Heather. "Microsoft says it will ship Visual Studio 2008 this month." ComputerWorld. 5 Nov 2007.

Microsoft says it will release Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 by the end of the month. Soma Somasegar, corporate vice president of Microsoft's developer division, says developers will be able to use their existing skills to build more compelling applications for end users. VS 2008 will allow users to create "smart client" applications that offer the same kind of rich user experiences that are found on the Web. This tool can be used to develop applications for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Office 2007, and the Web. VS 2008 provides performance and scalability upgrades. VS 2008 also includes built-in syncronization support. Sync Framework, a tool that was released in a Community Technology Preview version for beta-testing, works with the built-in syncronization support. It allows you to take Web services and databases offline, and offers peer-to-peer collaboration. VS 2008 also allows developers to target older versions of the .NET Framework, instead of just the newest version. The main new feature of the .NET 3.5 Framework is that it is integrated with Language Integration Query (LINQ) that allows developers to refer to and interact with databases. Microsoft also announced changes to the licensing terms for its Visual Studio business partners. Partners will no longer be limited to building technology only on top of Visual Studio for Windows and other Microsoft systems.