Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Beta
Download the Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta and try it out with the Dec07 CTP of Parallel Extensions. There are no known compatibility issues at this time, though it is always possible that we missed something crucial to your prototyping scenarios. Please let us know about your experiences, so that we can factor that into our development.
· Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1 includes support for SQL Server 2008, new ADO.NET features such as the Entity Framework, improvements to the WPF designers, WCF templates for Silverlight projects, debugger support for the .NET Framework public symbols and source release, control improvements such as the DataRepeater for Windows Forms and Office 2007 Ribbons for C++, and several general updates for debugging and IntelliSense. SP1 also enhances the stability, performance, and security of many features. Download the Beta
· Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 service pack 1 is a cumulative update that contains many new features building incrementally upon .NET Framework 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, and includes .NET Framework 2.0 service pack 2 and .NET Framework 3.0 service pack 2 cumulative updates. Download the Beta
The .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 does not contain Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework. We took a hard look at this release, and realized that we would have had to sacrifice some combination of performance, scalability, quality, or features to make that happen, and that it was just not the right release for Parallel Extensions in terms of both timing and scope.
The team is hard at work on a future CTP of Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework, which will work with both .NET 3.5 and .NET 3.5 SP1. Stay tuned to the Parallel Computing developer center at http://msdn.com/concurrency and to the team blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/pfxteam for the earliest updates about future releases.
In the meanwhile, do download the Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta and try it out with the Dec07 CTP of Parallel Extensions. Please let us know about your experiences, so that we can factor that into our development.
