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What's new in the .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1

Introduction

Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 enable developers to rapidly create connected applications that deliver high quality and rich user experiences. Visual Studio 2008 enables organizations of every size to rapidly create secure, manageable, and reliable applications that are optimized for Windows Vista™, SQL Server, the Microsoft 2007 Office system and the Web.

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (SP1) continue Microsoft’s investment in market leading development tools and developer platform. SP1 addresses issues that were found through a combination of customer and partner feedback, as well as internal testing. These service packs offer customers improvements in responsiveness, stability and performance.

Overview

.NET-based Windows application development benefits from increased Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) designer performance and updated components for Visual Basic and Visual C++ (including a MFC-based Office 2007 Ribbon). Web development improvements include enhanced the client-side script tooling (JavaScript IntelliSense). In addition to IDE performance inprovements SP1 fully supports SQL Server 2008 and the ADO.NET Entity Framework.

The .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (SP1) delivers more controls, a streamlined setup, improved start-up performance, and powerful new graphics features for client development and rich data scaffolding, improved AJAX support, and other improvements for Web development. Additionally it introduces support for the ADO.NET Entity Framework and ADO.NET Data Services, which simplify data access code in applications by providing an extensible, conceptual model for data from any data source and enabling this model to closely reflect business requirements.

The .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 delivers:

  • Performance increases between 20-45% for WPF-based applications – without having to change any code
  • WCF improvements that give developers more control over the way they access data and services
  • Streamlined installation experience for client applications
  • Improvements in the area of data platform, such as the ADO.NET Entity Framework, ADO.NET Data Services and support for SQL Server 2008’s new features
  • ASP.NET Dynamic Data to facilitate rapid data driven development

Additional Details

WPF improvements

  • Cold startup performance improvement ranging between 20-45% depending on application size without needing to modify any code.
  • Additional WPF support for text, graphics, and media to deliver better performance. For example, effects like DropShadow and Blur were implemented using software rendering; with SP1 these are now implemented using hardware acceleration. Other examples include:
    • Text, especially when used in Visual and DrawingBrush, is substantially faster,
    • Data scalability improvements - Container Recycling, TreeView virtualization, etc. to enable richer data editing support,
    • Media performance improvements,
    • A much improved WriteableBitmap that enables real-time bitmap updates from a software surface,

.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Optimized Client Runtime

SP1 provides a .NET Framework install version that is optimized for .NET-based client applications. The size of this optimized runtime is less than 20 MB.

New ADO.NET Data Features

  • ADO.NET Entity Framework
    • The ADO.NET Entity Framework is the next evolution of ADO.NET, raising the level of abstraction at which programmers work with data, and allowing the database structure or data source to evolve without significant impact to the application code.
    • Rather than coding against rows and columns, the ADO.NET Entity Framework allows the definition of a higher-level Entity Data Model over your relational data, and allows developers to then program in terms of this model. Developers get to deal with the data in the shapes that make sense for the application, and those shapes are expressed in a richer vocabulary that includes concepts like inheritance, complex types, and explicit relationships.
    • Use LINQ to Entities with the Entity Framework for queries that help create easy to maintain code that retrieves and works with strongly typed data objects or business entities.
  • ADO.NET Data Services
    • The Microsoft ADO.NET Data Services framework provides a first-class infrastructure for developing the next wave of dynamic internet applications by enabling data to be exposed as REST-based data services that can be consumed by client applications (ASP.NET, AJAX, Silverlight) in corporate networks and across the internet. Easily build applications using a comprehensive set of Microsoft .NET libraries and client components, accessing data through uniform URI syntax and using standard HTTP verbs to operate on the resource.
    • ADO.NET Data Services provides a framework to build data services for relational data sources, such as Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, DB2, and Oracle, using the built-in support for the ADO.NET Entity Framework, or for non-relational data sources using the pluggable provider model.

New ASP.NET Features

  • ASP.NET Dynamic Data
    • ASP.NET Dynamic Data provides a rich scaffolding framework that allows rapid data driven development without writing any code.
  • Improved ASP.NET AJX Support
    • A new addition to ASP.NET AJAX that provides support for managing browser history (back button support).

Conclusion

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 significantly improve the developer experience during the development process and at runtime. SP1 addresses a range of the top issues from customers and partners.

Download Visual Studio 2008 SP1
Download the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
Further information about SP1