REDMOND, USA: Microsoft Corp. announced the release to manufacturing (RTM) of the .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Visual Studio 2008 SP1. These releases come just nine months after the release of the .NET Framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008, and include a substantial number of updates based directly on customer feedback.

The service packs continue to address the needs of the developer community by making it even easier to develop applications for the latest platforms, with new features such as the .NET Framework Client Profile for faster deployment of Windows-based applications, multiple enhancements to ASP.NET, and unparalleled support for database application development through the ADO.NET Entity Framework, ADO.NET Data Services and integration with SQL Server 2008.

"Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 had an extremely positive impact on our ability to develop a Web-based application that our customer, Misys Healthcare Systems, could use to manage patients' records, in fact, it helped us boost development speed by 60 percent," said Galen Murdock, president and CEO at Veracity Solutions Inc.

"The Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX improvements and new capabilities such as ADO.NET Entity  Framework and ADO.NET Data Services meant we didn't have to worry about any of the underlying plumbing and could simply focus on building a highly
responsive and interactive experience for users."

New Breakthroughs for Developing and Deploying Client Applications
The .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 includes the new .NET Framework Client Profile, the fastest and easiest way to deploy applications for Windows. With .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and the .NET Framework Client Profile, developers can more easily deploy client applications thanks to an 86.5 percent reduction (197MB to 26.5MB) in .NET Framework size.

This means that end users will be able to download and install Windows-based applications significantly faster than before. The .NET Framework Client Profile also makes it possible to extend the improved download and installation experience to existing .NET applications.

Developers now can quickly and simply deploy new and existing rich-client applications to a broader audience. Any services connecting to these applications will also see up to 10 times the amount of performance improvement when running in Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS7).

"The beauty of the .NET Framework has always been that it makes it easier for developers to build applications that are visually stunning, well connected and highly secure," said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Division at Microsoft. "However, we want to make sure we are keeping the end-user experience in mind as well, which is why we created the .NET Framework Client Profile. The .NET Framework Client Profile significantly speeds up the installation of Windows and enables a much more consumer-friendly experience. This is a huge step forward for the more than 4 million .NET developers worldwide."

The .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 includes several improvements to the common language runtime, such as the ability to generate managed code that improves application startup time by 20 percent to 45 percent and end-to-end application execution time up to 10 percent, and the ability of managed code to take advantage of the Address Space Layout

Randomization security feature in Windows Vista. In addition, .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 has improvements for the creation of rich-client applications and line-of-business applications using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).