Building WCF services declaratively in XAML lets you integrate services with workflows and provides flexibility that identical services implemented in code cannot.
SQL Server's new FILESTREAM feature simplifies the process of keeping file-based data, such as images, in sync with relational data.
ASP.NET's new ListView control provides template-based layout for both display and CRUD database operations, making it an extremely way to build data-centric Web applications.
Build fully-editable Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) database front-ends easily and discover how to group and aggregate data using the new LinqDataSource control in ASP.NET.
The LinqDataSource control gives your applications native .NET object mapping to back-end data stores, unifying data access and reducing the need for store-specific coding.
Adding reusable, configurable, and robust logging to your applications can't get much easier.
Give your applications seamless and reusable error handling and logging services with the powerful toolset from Enterprise Library 3.0.
Use standardized caching to simplify your development and reduce hard-to-find bugs.
Avoid the tedious and error-prone task of writing validation "plumbing" code by integrating the Validation Application Block into your .NET applications.
LINQ lets you use an object-centric approach to access and update data along with convenient automated mapping. Best of all, you don't have to completely rewrite your applications to take advantage of it.
Lose your dependency on third-party search engines by integrating your applications with Vista's Windows Desktop Search.
You're probably used to hosting WCF services with IIS, but Vista and IIS 7 provide a much more powerful and lighter-weight option that supports additional protocols besides HTTP.
LINQ provides a straightforward yet expressive SQL-like syntax with which you can query an Entity Data Model and uses anonymous types to return strongly-typed results.
The Entity Data Model and ADO.NET vNext let you deal with tabular data as objects, eliminating much of the effort endemic to older data-retrieval and modification code.
ADO.NET vNext is a leap forward in database programming, using mapping files to isolate your applications from relational database schema changes, and letting you choose whether to deal with data directly as objects or as tabular data.