All Aboard the Developer "Express"

I had a great time this week presenting to the London Database Developer Forum on the Express product range. As I'm sure most of you know, we announced at TechEd Europe the first public beta of a range of cut-down, very low cost versions of our developer and database tools. These tools are limited in functionality - you can't connect to remote databases, for example - but are a fantastic way to get to grips with the .NET Framework without making a large investment.

In the presentation I gave, I demonstrated how you could use Visual Basic Express and SQL Server Express to write a relational database client application supporting read/write access to data across multiple tables with only two lines of code, using the TableAdapter objects and the in-built Data Sources window. We also covered how SQL Server Express provides all the benefits of MSDE plus a streamlined management tool and increased headroom.

Some attendees asked for the slides, so I've included them here, along with a rough'n'ready demo script that I used as a reference for the steps. Feel free to take these and use them for your own purposes, for demonstration to other groups or simply as a learning tool.