Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (VS08) Service Pack 1 (SP1) took eight months to arrive. Considering the capabilities that have been added, eight months might not seem so long. In some ways, SP1 feels like the completion of what Visual Studio 2008 was supposed to be. It's certainly not just the collection of bug fixes that you'd expect from the term "service pack."
As I said in my original review of Visual Studio 2008 in January, VS08 is the premier IDE for developing applications with the Microsoft .Net Framework and at least a contender for the best Windows-hosted C/C++ IDE. As I went on to quibble, the product as released in December lacked the much-anticipated ADO.Net Entity Framework and LINQ to Entities, and broke some JavaScript and VBScript functionality from previous versions.
It's about the data
SP1 finally includes the ADO.Net Entity Framework (EF), the Entity Data Model (EDM), and LINQ to Entities. EDM is a full-blown language-independent, database-independent entity-relationship model. It is supported by an Entity SQL language and is especially useful for data-centric line-of-business applications. LINQ to Entities integrates queries against Entities into C# and Visual Basic, which may obviate the need to learn the subtleties of Entity SQL for many programmers.
Note that Entity SQL is significantly different from the Transact-SQL query language used in Microsoft SQL Server. Speaking of SQL Server, SP1 adds full support for SQL Server 2008 to Visual Studio 2008, hot on the heels of the release of SQL Server 2008.
Better scripting
I'm happy to say that the VS08 HTML editor is no longer broken for Classic ASP. The HTML editor is still not smart enough to resolve server-side includes, however.
You'll find vastly improved IntelliSense and code formatting for JavaScript in SP1, even for third-party libraries, at least if you structure your files the way VS08 expects. If you mess up the structure enough to confuse the JavaScript parser, the worst that now happens is that the VS08 IntelliSense and code formatting won't work; syntax coloring usually continues to work, and the editor stays out of your way instead of trying to "help" you with misguided changes.
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Computerworld Live Podcast #97: The Future of Enterprise Networking 25/07/2008 09:45:36
This week CW Live chats with Mark Thompson, global sales and marketing manager for HP ProCurve, on the future of the enterprise networking. Mark discusses the trends we can expect to see in the near future and how the right infrastructure can ensure your enterprise network is secure. - +
Computerworld Live Podcast #96: Security at the Edge 11/06/2008 09:22:22
CW Live speaks with Amol Mitra, HP ProCurve Director of Marketing for Asia Pacific and Japan. Today's topic: how enterprises are starting to shift away from simply controlling security via server logins, firewalls and moving to more adaptive security frameworks. - +
Data Management Edition #10: Multi-Petascale Systems 02/05/2008 09:12:33
This week we look at sustainability and the development of multicore technologies to build multi-petascale systems. - +
IT Security Edition #11: How to poison the Storm botnet 01/05/2008 08:51:55
This week CW Live presents a case study on how to poison the notorious Storm botnet . Plus we take a look at Cisco's plans for Ironport. - +
IT Security Edition #10: Cyber-battles fought and won 24/04/2008 11:09:47
Vendors bow to end user pressure to improve product security, and we take a look at the latest concepts shaping the cyber-battlefield of the future.
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