The sql server primary query language is Transact-SQL, an implementation of the ANSI/ISO standard Structured Query Language (SQL) used by both Sql server express and Sybase. SQL Server is commonly used by businesses for small- to medium-sized databases, but the past five years have seen greater adoption of the product for larger enterprise databases.

SQL Server Express is a product that has been released in Beta as a follow up to the MSDE product. Many new features as well as complementary products for all of the .NET development tools are now available. Read on for a quick summary of what this new product line is all about. Sql server express is moving forward with the next evolution of SQL Server, AKA Yukon, AKA SQL Server 2005. The product is being developed and coincides with the Visual Studio 2005. However the next Beta, Beta 2, which TechEd 2004 attendees were allowed to sign up for, will not be a large public release. Instead it should be here any day for a larger audience than Beta 1, but still a limited group, only about 100,000 users.

Beta 3 is expected to be available for the general public. Therefore, the product is not quite ready for prime time. I'd look for the dates to slip for the general release. It was expected for Q1 2005, now I'm thinking TechEd 2005, the June timeframe.

All of us that plan on sticking with SQL Server as one of our primary skills, be it DBA, developer, whatever, if you use SQL Server technically, you will want to learn something about .NET and the CLR Using .NET easily enables me to link a VB.NET function to a C#.Net library and data types, etc. match up and work seamlessly. Don't think that the developers you work with won't want to give this a try, especially if they each like different languages to code in.

SQL Server Express is the product taking the place of MSDE. It is installed with Visual Studio and also available as a separate download. It appears from the description that many of the complaints and issues with MSDE have been considered with this product. For example, this product supports: Single CPU systems, but can be installed on multi-cpu systems, 1GB RAM, 4GB databases, stored procedures, views, triggers, cursors, the same core SQL Server engine, many of the new database features like snapshot isolation, extended indexes, distributed transactions, it can act as subscription client for replication, full .NET and CLR integration, native XML data type and XQuery support, and it can easily migrate databases to the full edition once it is available Keep in mind that a few things are not included, DTS, Notification Services, Analysis Services. This is a learning system, not a development or production product.

The workload governor has also been removed, but with the limit of a single CPU and 1GB of RAM for the product, there is a limit to how well it will perform. Another omission is SQLAgent, so any scheduling you need to do will require the Windows scheduler as well as the new SQLCMD command line utility. This replaces MSDE, or will eventually, so it has the same multi-instance capabilities. At this time, Sql server express has said the instance limit is fifty.