VS 2008 SP1, .NET 3.5 SP1 ready for prime time

What a piece of news for a Monday! Shipping a little earlier that anticipated, Microsoft announced this morning the general availability of Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and .NET 3.5 SP1. These major updates to the .NET developer tools are already available for download from Microsoft's website, so I encourage you to grab them now. If you've been paying attention, you know that the SP1 beta shipped almost three months ago, and at the time I warned early adopters to beware. In theory, Microsoft has used the time since then to respond to all of the beta feedback and problems, so today's release should make it possible for everyone to start enjoying the new stuff in SP1 (which I also detailed when the beta dropped). And since I know many of you wont take the time to go back and review what's in SP1, here are just a few highlights:

• New ASP.NET URL Routing Engine (from MVC)
• New ASP.NET Dynamic Data framework
• ADO.NET Entity Framework (yay?)
• ADO.NET Data Services
• SQL Server 2008 support
• Real-time C# error checking

If you want a more complete list, you've got to review my old post. The point, though, is this: this is way more than a typical SP release, so don't miss out on all of the new tools at your finger tips. And if you hit any problems, let us know! Download VS 2008 SP1 Download VS 2008 Express Editions w/ SP1 Download .NET 3.5 SP1 NOTE: Credit to Kevin for beating me to the punch!