An infrastructure update for SharePoint 2007 was released yesterday.  This post will be number 10,001 on the topic, as I am sure it will be blogged about heavily.  This update includes several things that are of interest to ISVs, especially the ability to federate searches.  The release includes not only a rollup of hotfixes post SP1, but several platform performance improvements as well as search enhancements to support federated searching.

• Enterprise Search Feature enhancements include federated search capability and administration dashboard that unifies the experience between Search Server 2008, Search Server Express 2008 and SharePoint 2007.
• Several search related performance improvements as well as a new index format create more efficient and faster crawls and query speed.
• Several fixes have been made to the Content Deployment process.  This improve reliability, content and settings fidelity and prevent import failures.
• The Profile and Profile Service have been improved to speed performance.
• Investments in the Upgrade and Path process have been made to improve the process for future updates.  This should mean less downtime and a quicker upgrade process moving forward.

This should be considered an important update for all customers on the SharePoint platform.

For more information please refer to these KB articles:

Description of the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951695

Fixes Included in the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB953749)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953749

Description of the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951297

Fixes Included in the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB953750)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953750