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Microsoft Releases Visual Studio 2010 SP1 at Dubai Tech-Ed

Microsoft released Service Pack 1 of Visual Studio 2010 on Tuesday. S. "Soma" Somasegar, senior vice president of Microsoft's Developer Division, announced the release during his keynote speech at the Tech-Ed Middle East conference, being held this week in Dubai.

Enhancements to Microsoft's flagship integrated development environment (IDE) include feature additions, a comprehensive set of bug fixes and software tweaks. According to Microsoft, the improvements address VS 2010's performance, responsiveness and stability.

A public beta of VS 2010 SP1 has been available since December. Starting today, it is available for MSDN subscribers to download here, and beginning on March 10 as a public download here.

Jason Zander, corporate vice president of the VS team in Microsoft's Developer Division, provided more details in a blog post. Zander singled out several new features added at customers' request, including IntelliTrace support for 64-bit and SharePoint projects, an improved Help Viewer, and integrated Silverlight 4 tooling.

Rob Sanfilippo, analyst at research firm Directions on Microsoft, said SP1 continues Microsoft's ongoing efforts to improve VS 2010, which launched in April 2010.

"VS 2010 has been a solid, successful release. It has delivered on its promises and has been a stable environment, without the requirement of any major patches since it shipped," Sanfilippo wrote in an e-mail interview, noting that the fixes in the SP1 release were not "urgent."

Sanfilippo emphasized that Microsoft has added a range of new SDKs and tooling for VS 2010 since its release, addressing support for Windows Azure, Windows Phone 7 and ASP.NET MVC 3.0. The release of SP1 could motivate some dev organizations to make the switch to VS 2010.

"SP1 will further stabilize the IDE, so teams that haven't made the switch yet may get the final boost of confidence when it ships," he wrote.

Feature Packs and LightSwitch Beta 2 Unveiled
Somasegar unveiled other Visual Studio-related updates at the Tech-Ed event in Dubai, including two new VS Feature Packs and an updated beta of the VS LightSwitch tooling for business application development. The Feature Packs are available to users of the VS Ultimate Edition.

TFS-Project Server Integration Feature Pack enables teams to "work more effectively together using Visual Studio, Project and SharePoint" and coordinate development, Somasegar wrote. The Feature Pack improves collaboration among teams using different methodologies. The download for MSDN subscribers can be found here.

The VS Load Test Feature Pack lets developers stress test their applications using an unlimited number of virtual users, without requiring VS Load Test Virtual User Pack 2010 licenses. More information can be found on the VS Load Test Virtual User Pack 2010 page.

Finally, Somasegar announced the coming release of Beta 2 of the VS LightSwitch development environment for business power users and analysts. The fresh beta, expected "in the coming weeks," according to Somasegar, extends LightSwitch support for Windows Azure- and SQL Azure-based application development.

About the Author

Michael Desmond is an editor and writer for 1105 Media's Enterprise Computing Group.

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