BANGALORE, INDIA: Given the amount of difference in Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1, VS 2008 & .NET SP1 is more like a new product than its predecessor. Besides giving enhanced performance in WPF application plus added designer improvements overall added features makes this release efficient and flexible for development and deployment of applications. Here are features to look out in new release:

SQL Server 2008 Support

As SQL Server 2008 was released after Visual Studio 2008 one of the most important changes in new release is support for SQL Server 2008. This will further help organisations thinking to switch over to SQL Server 2008.

To create data service click on ‘Project>Add New Item’, from list of items select ‘ADO.NET Data Service’. We have named it ‘School.svc’

ADO.NET Entity Framework

Often developers need to understand the database before they can write access codes for it. Now understanding complex database structure that is controlled by administrator becomes a bottleneck in application development cycle. Using Microsoft’s ADO.NET Entity Framework developers can create an entity relationship model of the database (i.e. SQL Server) inside Visual Studio 2008.

This conceptual model is then used by developers to write code against database and that in turn reduces code development time along with lines of code. This is step by Microsoft to increase abstraction making things efficient for developers. Consider this example: when we write code to access data from a database (SQL Server), we often have to write quires containing ‘Joins’, joins can only be used if there is complete understanding of underlying database structure.