Microsoft today released Service Pack 1 for all seven editions of SQL Server 2008. he update is available in 32-bit, 64-bit, and ia64 flavors from the Microsoft Download Center.

Improvements:

• Slipstream allows administrators to install SQL Server 2008 and Service Pack 1 in a single instance. This decreases the total time for an installation, including a fewer number of reboots, thereby increasing productivity and deployment availability
• Service Pack Uninstall allows administrators to uninstall the service pack separately from the database release. This feature also improves DBA productivity, reduces the cost of deployment and improves overall supportability
• Report Builder 2.0 Click Once improves the existing SQL Server end-user report authoring application by easing deployment to business users

For more information about SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1, please review the Release Notes.

The 2009 release of Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack is now available for purchase by Software Assurance customers at the Microsoft Volume Licensing Site.
Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack tools include Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset, Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management, and Microsoft System Center Desktop Error Monitoring. However, new to this year’s version is the first release of Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V 1.0), a Cumulative Update to Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V 4.5 CU1), and an update to the Asset Inventory Service (AIS).

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Rhomobile has announced the official 1.0 release of Rhodes, an open source Ruby-based framework for mobile application development that supports all of the mainstream smartphone operating systems. The framework, which is modeled after Ruby on Rails, has the potential to accelerate the development of data-driven mobile software while guaranteeing high portability.

Version 1.0, which was released Tuesday, adds support for Google’s Linux-based Android mobile operating system. Rhodes also supports the iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian. Rhodes applications are written with Ruby and with HTML, using the erb templating engine. The applications are compiled down into self-standing executables for each of the supported platforms.

For more details, check out the company’s official web site and documentation wiki. The source code can be obtained from the project’s version control repository on Github.

What’s New in Microsoft Silverlight 3

Take a tour of the new features in Silverlight 3 including a dive into some of the new experience oriented features like pixel shaders, perspective 3D, animation enhancements, bitmap APIs and improvements to the media stack. Also hear about new Silverlight base framework additions including updates to the style model, data binding improvements, improved resource handling and improvements to the web services stack. This session will also introduce the Silverlight 3 out of browser model.

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