Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 RTM Internal Completed.

Today, the internal RTM of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 was announced. This is a tremendous milestone and is in anticipation of a public release on 7.Nov. for all versions of the products. Microsoft is also releasing the 32 and 64-bit versions of the .NET Framework 2.0 and the .NET Framework SDK to the Microsoft download center for immediate public consumption. For those that have MSDN Subscriptions, Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition and SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition are now available for download. I am personally excited to work with these new products as they will change how we do architecture, development, test, analysis, operations, and data.

Soon to come:

Here is some text from Soma's Email:

Visual Basic developers will love Edit and Continue, the My Classes, and the wide array of new features for client development in Windows Forms.  Visual C# developers will instantly be more productive with refactoring, generics, and numerous new debugging capabilities.  Visual C++ developers will have seamless access to the full power of the Common Language Runtime and .NET Framework, advanced browsing, editing and debugging, numerous security enhancements and the best performance ever.  Web Development has never been faster or easier with Master Pages, Personalization, Web Parts, and declarative data access to databases and business objects. Office application development is taken to a whole new level with Excel and Word designers, Outlook support, and the integration of Windows Forms controls.  Developing applications for the devices is now truly a 1st class citizen in Visual Studio.  The Visual Studio development environment enables both individual productivity and team productivity.  Simply amazing!

Enterprise customers are already jumping to the Visual Studio Team System product line which provides tools to support Architects, Developers, Testers and Project Managers. With visual designers for enterprise systems, load and unit testing tools and the performance analysis tools used internally at Microsoft, we are enabling teams to successfully and predictably build and deploy mission critical solutions on the .NET Framework.  With the just shipped final beta of Team Foundation Server and its final release early next year, we will deliver a truly integrated, collaborative platform for the entire software development lifecycle.

The .NET Framework, Common Language Runtime, and ASP.NET have the highest stress and scalability rates we’ve ever achieved.  With the .NET Compact Framework, native 64bit support on the server, built in database caching in ASP.NET and managed stored procedures in SQL Server 2005 we are delivering the preeminent multi-tier application development platform in the industry. 

We took transparency with the community to a whole new level and provided customers with unparalleled access to our vision, processes, builds, struggles, defects, and successes. We delivered Community Technology Previews every 6-8 weeks and got valuable feedback from our customers through the MSDN Product Feedback Center.  We had 24 early adopter (TAP) customers and a number of internal customers deploying in their production environment the Release Candidates of Whidbey and Yukon and they all signed off on the product release.  To our customer community I say, “Thank you, for helping us build and deliver great products”.