I’m not going to speak about everything in detail that’s because not everything is that important for me at this point in time. To quickly sum it up what was released, announced:

- Silverlight 3.0 – What’s new in Silverlight 3.0 ? – A guide to Silverlight 3.0 new features
- Expression Blend 3.0 Preview
- ASP.NET MVC RTW 1.0  – Check out Phil Haack’s release post
- Windows Azure March 2009 CTP Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio
- Windows Azure March 2009 CTP Software development kit (SDK)
- Live framework and tools
- Microsoft .NET RIA Services  Preview – What is .NET RIA Services? – Some RIA Services  samples

Currently I’m focused on Windows Azure, ASP.NET MVC.

I’ll start with showing some of the new features in Windows Azure March ‘09 CTP:

What’s new in Windows Azure SDK

• - Support for developing Managed Full Trust applications. It also provides support for Native Code via PInvokes and spawning native processes.
• - Support for developing FastCGI applications, including support for rewrite rules via URL Rewrite Module.
• - Improved support for the integration of development storage with Visual Studio, including enhanced performance and support for SQL Server (only local instance).

What’s new in Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio

• - Combined installer includes the Windows Azure SDK
• - Addressed top customer issues
• - Native Code Debugging
• - Update Notification of future releases
• - FastCGI template

From the above list, the really important new features are full trust enabling and next to that FastCGI.

With FastCGI now not only ASP.NET developers but also other developers can place there applications written in PHP for example in Microsoft’s cloud.

I think it’s good that they have provided this possibility with FastCGI. This doesn’t make Microsoft’s cloud only available for Microsoft developers but also for other kinds. This makes Azure more of an open platform.

I will do some more small post on some specific things like ASP.NET MVC