I've long been advocating that you just can't look at these products in seperation, especially when there was a lot of heat about both Whidbey and Yukon getting delayed. It's nice to see that somebody within MS agrees with me.
Better Together - VS 2005 and SQL Server 2005
With SQL Server 2005, database programmers can now take advantage of the rich functionality of the .NET Framework and the Common Language Runtime (CLR). Using CLR integration as a core part of SQL Server 2005, database developers can now realize the full benefit of .NET. SQL Server 2005 developers can create their stored procedures, functions, triggers and user defined types using languages that target the .NET framework, such as VB.NET and C#. Developers who are already programming to the .NET framework are seeing huge gains in terms of performance, reliability and security. With this integration work, we now offer all the benefits of the .NET framework and managed code to SQL Server database developers.