Yesterday during the keynotes of ASP.NET Connections (Las Vegas) and TechEd: Developers (Barcelona) Microsoft made a couple of - long awaited - announcements.

• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Redistributable Package is now RTM
• ASP.NET AJAX is now in beta 2. Check out Matt Gibbs blog for more details.
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (aka VSTO 2005 Second Edition) is RTM.
• SQL Server Compact Edition RC1 was released. Read the details on Steve Lasker's blog.

One of the interesting things related to the Microsoft web platform & tools - that didn't received much attention - was the availability of the IronPython CTP for ASP.NET. Where IronPython was already available since a couple of weeks it had no support for web development. With this CTP developers have the ability to create compelling web applications in the popular dynamic language for .NET, IronPython, using Visual Studio or the free Visual Web Developer.

IronPython for ASP.NET is a free extension to ASP.NET that is targeted at:

• ASP.NET developers looking to enjoy the simplicity and flexibility of a dynamic language, specifically IronPython; and
• Python developers looking to harness the power of ASP.NET and its rapid application development (RAD) environment.

On the official site there are a number of must-read documents and although to help you get started with IronPython for ASP.NET. Check it out at http://www.asp.net/ironpython/.

Tomorrow Thursday at TechEd: Developers we'll have two talks scheduled on IronPython where these new cool features will be explained and shown.

• DEV206 Common Language Runtime (CLR): IronPython and .NET Scripting Languages
• Mahesh Prakriya
• Thu Nov 9 10:45 - 12:00
• 'IronPython' is the codename for a new implementation of the Python programming language on the .NET Framework. IronPython is fast – in fact, up to 1.8 times faster than Python-2.4 on the standard pystone benchmark. It supports an interactive interpreter with fully dynamic compilation as well as static compilation to produce pre-compiled executables. It's well integrated with the rest of the framework and makes all .NET libraries easily available to Python programmers. This session shows how IronPython brings the power of .NET to Python and the power of Python to .NET. At OSCON 2004, the first public release of IronPython was announced. This session demonstrates the latest IronPython version in a range of situations from using GUI frameworks to driving Microsoft Office applications to working with a variety of external libraries. We also discuss other scripting languages on .NET.
• DEVWD26 ASP.NET: Developing ASP.NET Web Applications with IronPython
• Mahesh Prakriya
• Thu Nov 9 17:30 - 18:45
• Whiteboard Discussions are an opportunity for you to discuss products and technologies with our experts and to get specific questions answered. Come to this discussion where our experts are on hand to discuss how to develop ASP.NET web applications with IronPython. IronPython is a new fast implementation of the Python programming language running on the .NET Framework. While it stays true to the beauty and simplicity of the Python language, IronPython offers Python programmers seamless access to the richness and power of .NET libraries and applications in a fully dynamic environment as well as static compilation to produce pre-compiled assemblies. In this discussion we will discuss how to use IronPython to add rich scripting support to existing .NET applications and extend new applications with custom Python code. We will also demonstrate how IronPython can be used to combine a wide variety of .NET components and services.