Ty Anderson post a new article about the new free database from Microsoft SQL Server Express. He writes:

«Free has many connotations, depending upon where it is used. Free gas? Always a good thing. Free milk? Great (unless you're lactose intolerant). But free software? The first thought that comes to mind is, "What's the catch?" Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Express is free, which might cause people to have certain expectations around it. One of the obvious ones is that it will compare well to other free database systems like MySQL, which it does. The problem lies in the comparison criteria. A fair comparison is possible, but you have to be careful not compare apples and oranges.

Comparing a full-versioned, open source system to a feature-restricted version of a larger product is most likely a flawed process from the beginning—especially when the comparison's purpose is meant to compare the cons with one product against the pros of the other. That said, let's discuss SQL Server 2008 Express: what it is and how it should be utilized. Along the way, I will do some comparison to MySQL in order to provide more meat to the discussion. »

Source: devX.com.

Kevin Goff post an article about building database web applications using ASP.NET 3.5, LINQ, and SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services.. In this article he gives a lot of intresting advices on the following topics:

• Using event delegation for reusable data maintenance functions

• Subclassing master pages

• ASP.NET AJAX is now built directly into ASP.NET 3.5!

• Improved support for nested master pages

• Paging result sets—why you still can't beat a stored procedure

• Using LINQ to build a basic data access piece for stored procedures

• Using LINQ to handle multiple result sets from a stored procedure

• Building a data-aware web page with LINQ (Part 1 of 2)

• Building a data-aware web page with LINQ (Part 2 of 2)

• Using LINQ to XML to handle large XML files

• The Baker's Dozen Potpourri—some tidbits for SQL Server Reporting Services 2005

Source: devX.com.

ADO.NET team writes about changes that brings the Visual Studio 2008 SP1 beta. This changes are divided on three following big parts:

• Schema Changes( covers CSDL, SSDL and ProviderManifest Xml formats)

• Object Services Changes

• Providers

• Metadata

You can read the full version of this post in the ADO.NET team blog.

Opera Mini 4.1 released recently. David Chartier write about this release the following:

«Opera today released version 4.1 of its Opera Mini browser for mobile phones that can run Java applications. Even though version 4.0 just landed last November, version 4.1 makes an equally significant splash with a number of new features for searching, exchanging files, and archiving pages for offline viewing.

Topping out Opera Mini 4.1's new features is the ability to search text on the current web page. Turning out towards the rest of the web, however, Opera Mini 4.1 can also recognize and suggest URLs when typing in the address field. These suggestions are based on your bookmarks (which can be synchronized with a desktop copy of Opera via the company's Opera Link feature) and browsing history.»

You can read the full version of this article on th Ars Technica site.

There is an intresting article about creating LINQ quries with IN statement posted in Rob Connoory Blog. He writes:

«An IN query will pull back a set of results from SQL that is within a given range. This range can be set manually, or can itself be a query. So if you have an eCommerce application and you want to know what products you have in a given user’s cart, you could do this (using AdventureWorks):

PostgreSQL 8.3 was released. Here's a small exerpt from release info:
"Today the PostgreSQL Global Development Group releases the long-awaited version 8.3 of the most advanced open source database, which cements our place as the best performing open source database. Among the performance features you'll be excited about in 8.3 are: