Microsoft Monday released the final bits of Visual Studio 2008 and the .Net Framework 3.5, which are foundation elements of its development tools suite.

The Visual Studio suite of tools, including Visual Studio Express and Visual Studio Team System, are aimed at developers building applications for Vista, Windows Server 2008, Office 2007 and Web applications. New features include the .Net Language Integrated Query (LINQ), a general-purpose query mechanism for accessing relational, XML and other data not natively defined by object oriented programming. Visual Studio 2008 also includes enhancements to ASP.Net to support Web development, new visual designers and code annotations.

Visual Studio also supports the Systems Definition Model (SDM), a key component of the modeling technology Microsoft is building into its management tools.

The .Net Framework 3.5, the heart of Microsoft’s managed code platform, includes support for Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF). Both help developers include business logic in applications developed for SOAs and software-plus-services applications, which is Microsoft’s angle on the Web 2.0 trend. WCF also delivers support for communication technologies RSS and REST.

The framework also includes new security options for CardSpace, Microsoft’s user-centric identity system introduced with Vista.

The 3.5 version will not require Web sites using CardSpace to have an SSL certificate. The requirement, which is included in .Net Framework 3.0, meant that every CardSpace site had to deploy as a secure HTTP (HTTPS) site.

Microsoft said two weeks ago at its annual TechEd IT Forum conference in Barcelona, Spain, that Visual Studio 2008 and the .Net Framework 3.5 would ship by the end of November.

While Visual Studio 2008 is available now on MSDN, Microsoft is planning the software’s ceremonial launch Feb. 27, 2008 in Los Angeles along with Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. Ironically, SQL Server 2008 won’t be launched that day eitheras the database is expected to ship between April 1 and June 30, 2008. Windows Server 2008, which was again delayed
in August, also might not launch at the Feb. 27 event.

Microsoft plans to use the day as a marketing event for the three products that it says form the back end and development-tool foundation of its services strategy.