Visual Studio Codename Orcas

Today was announced the release of the second beta of Visual Studio 2008 (Codename Orcas, internal version 9.0).
VS 2008 includes the .NET Framework 3.5 (for now also Beta 2), and therefore supports many interesting new technologies, including

• LINQ - language expansion of queries to data.
• ADO.NET Entity Framework - ORM-solution for ADO.NET.
• Acropolis - building composite Windows applications.
• Astoria - REST web services (with serialization of data, including in JSON).

The distribution includes, in addition to Visual Studio itself, SQL Server Express 2005 (I would venture to suggest that the final version will contain SQL Express 2008) and SQL Server Compact 3.5 (for installation on client workstations, tablets and PDAs).
It is also worth noting that VS 2008 Beta 2 is licensed by “Go-Live”, i.e. You can build commercial products and solutions today.
The following Visual Studio versions are available for download :

• Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition Beta 2
• Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition Beta 2
• Visual Studio Team System 2008 - Team Suite Beta 2
• Visual Studio Team System 2008 - Team Foundation Server Beta 2
• Visual Studio Team System 2008 - Test Load Agent Beta 2
• MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2

In addition, you can download virtual machines (in Virtual PC / Server format) with Visual Studio Team Suite preinstalled or from Team Suite and Team Foundation Server.
The fact that Microsoft continued the tradition of releasing Express-versions of Visual Studio (absolutely free, including for commercial use) cannot fail to please. The whole set of “express trains” is also available for download .
PS Don't be confused by the IMG file extensions. These are absolutely normal DVD images; they are easily mounted into virtual machines and all kinds of DVD-drive emulators (Daemon Tools, etc.).