CRM 2011 SDK 5.0.13 has been released and with it comes two huge improvements. The first being a brand new ExecuteMultipleRequest. This request gives developers the ability to send multiple requests to the CRM service so that the requests can be executed in order without needing to come back to the client after each request. This is a significant performance boost especially when loading thousands of records into CRM Online.
For more information on the ExecuteMultipleRequest, head here.
The next improvement is with the metadata service. Previously developers only had the option of returning a single attribute or entity metadata or retrieve all entity metadata. With the latest SDK, developers now have the same flexibility when retrieving metadata that they do when querying records. Metadata can be filtered by entity, attribute, or even by the properties of the entity or attribute and even specifying which properties are returned. For example, you can now return entity metadata for Lead and Account only or even return all entity metadata where the Ownership Type is User Owned.
For more information on the metadata service updates, head here.