Via TheServerSide.Net

Microsoft has released Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 to manufacturing, which means that MSDN subscribers can download these releases from the MSDN Subscribcription section. This release covers all versions including Visual Studio Team System Tester, Developer, and Architect. Also included are new versions of Visio for Architects and Infopath VSTO Toolkit.

"This is by far the best Visual Studio and .NET Framework release that we have ever done. I am very proud to be a part of the team that did a phenomenal job of delivering this fantastic product. I also want to take this opportunity to thank the community and early adopter customers for their incredible help and invaluable contributions in helping us ship the right product." -- S. Somesegar's Blog

In addition to the long awaited developer tools and SQL Server Database, Microsoft has release two supporting products. Visio for Enterprise Architects has been updated to be able to engineer code for Visual Studio 2005. Infopath support has also been added to Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005.

Support for InfoPath means you can add business logic to your form using managed code instead of script. Managed code allows you to use the Microsoft .NET Framework common language runtime (CLR) to write code in Microsoft Visual C# or Microsoft Visual Basic, and to make calls into the .NET Framework class library for advanced tasks such as digital signature processing and encryption/decryption. Visual Studio integration includes F1 Help support, full-featured debugging, and Microsoft IntelliSense in the code editor. IntelliSense provides statement completion, members lists, and inline parameter information on the InfoPath object model.