Two years ago, Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 were released simultaneously. This time around, as you well know, Visual Studio 2008 is ready now, but SQL Server 2008 will not be out until the end of February.

As a result, Soma Somasegar, corporate vice president in Microsoft’s Developer, has recently posted a roadmap of sorts for getting Visual Studio to support SQL Server 2008.

Two notes here:

• Visual Studio 2005 already supports the November CTP of SQL Server 2008, which came out before Visual Studio 2008 reached RTM.
• When the next SQL Server 2008 CTP is released, a patch for Visual Studio 2008 support will accompany it. Full tool support, meanwhile, is in the works for the RTM version of SQL Server 2008.

More specifics on Visual Studio, .NET Framework and SQL Server compatibility can be found in the Data Programmability group’s blog entry, Connecting to Pre-Release Versions of SQL Server 2008.