Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 RTM

Well everyone at MS is blogging about it. I thought I might as well jump on the bandwagon too ;)

Yeap, that's right. VS2005 and SQL Server 2005 is now available for the masses (well only if you are a MSDN subscriber). And for those who are wondering what's a RTM, well it means "Release to Manufacturing" (that the version they send to the CD/DVD duplicators). So it looks like its green lights for the big launch on the Nov 7th.
The redistributables packages are also available to the general public for downloads.

BTW, Dan Fernandez mentioned here of a tool to help with the un-installation of all pre-RTM versions from your machine. (Automatic uninstall tool).

A couple of notes about the uninstaller tool (again from Dan's blog)

• Do not use this tool if you have installed SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition or higher (SQL Server 2005 Express is okay). Why? Because we don't do ref counting on who is using the Framework and you can get into a situation where the uninstall tool will remove a pre-RTM version of the .NET Framework 2.0, but SQL Server 2005 Workgroup+ will still be installed on the machine. Because Workgroup edition uses managed code, you've now "hosed" your SQL 2005 Workgroup edition uninstall. Check the product readme for step-by-step instructions


• Do not click "Cancel" when the Automatic uninstall tool is running. Depending on when you click Cancel, it can "hose" your machine uninstall