Microsoft passed what it called a significant milestone on the road to the launch of several products on Thursday.

The company released to manufacturing of Visual Studio 2005, .NET Framework 2.0, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006.

The product line of Visual Studio 2005, formerly known by its code name of Whidbey, includes Visual Studio Team System, designed for collaboration, as well as Professional, Standard and Express Editions, the latter aimed at newbies and consumers.

SQL Server 2005, formerly Yukon, includes Report Builder, a reporting tool that is a key utility in the Enterprise Edition, as well as 64-bit support for Reporting Services and Notification Services; tighter integration with Visual Studio 2005; performance improvements in Management Studio; and a tool to help upgrade from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005.

In his blog on MSDN, S. Somasegar, chief of Microsoft's developer division, thanked the developer community and early-adopter customers for their contributions to "helping us ship the right product."

The statement shows Microsoft's increasing reliance on its strategy of releasing a steady stream of release candidates, community technology previews and beta builds, and then gathering feedback and bug reports.