Microsoft has released a new Community Technology Preview of its Visual Basic 9.0 development environment.

The CTP of Visual Basic 9.0 features support for Microsoft's LINQ (Language Integrated Query) extensions to the .Net framework and XML integration atop the XLinq API. The new release expands the XML integration in both the language and the IDE (integrated development environment), provides some editor features for the LINQ syntax, and enables DLinq for VB, according to the team building the tool.

Microsoft moves to soothe ruffled developers with the feature-rich VB 9.0. Click here to read more.

The VB9 team listed new features in this CTP, including LINQ IntelliSense, DLinq support, editing support for XML literals and XML late binding.

"VB 9.0 offers language extensions to support data-intensive programming in a unified way, i.e., creating; updating; and querying relational databases, XML documents, and object graphs," said S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of Microsoft's developer division, in a blog post. "The relationship between database programming and Visual Basic has always been a powerful one, but Visual Basic 9.0 takes it to a new level by unifying access to data independent of its source."

The January CTP of VB9 is available for download here.

This article was originally published on eWEEK.com.