Microsoft SQL Server (2008)

SQL Server 2008, formerly codenamed Katmai, was released on August 6, 2008 and goals to make data self organizing, management self-tuning, and self maintaining with the improvement of SQL Server Always On technologies, to give almost-zero downtime. SQL Server 2008 also includes support for structured and semi-structured data, as well as digital media formats for pictures, audio, video and other multimedia data. In present versions, such multimedia data can be saved as BLOBs (binary large objects), but they are generic bit streams. It also natively supports hierarchical data, and includes T-SQL constructs to directly deal with them, without using recursive queries. Basic awareness of multimedia data will permit specialized functions to be performed on them. According to Paul Flessner, senior Vice President, Server Applications, Microsoft Corp., SQL Server 2008 can be a data storage backend for different varieties of data: XML, email, time/calendar, file, document, spatial, etc as well as perform search, query, analysis, sharing, and synchronization across all data types.

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Microsoft Visual Basic

Visual Basic (VB) is an event-driven programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft for its COM programming model that was first released in 1991. Visual Basic is fairly easy to learn and use. Visual Basic was derived from Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instructional Code (BASIC) and enables rapid application development (RAD) of graphical user interface (GUI) applications, and it can be used to create databases with Data Access Objects, Remote Data Objects, or ActiveX Data Objects. It can also generate ActiveX controls and objects. The language not only permits programmers to make simple GUI applications, but also to develop applications with more complex functionalities. Programming in VB is a combination of visually arranging components or controls on a form, specifying attributes and actions of those components, and writing additional lines of code for more functionality. Scripting languages like VBA and VBScript are similar, in terms of syntax, to Visual Basic, but perform differently. VB can generate executables (EXE files), ActiveX controls, or DLL files, but is mainly used to build up Windows applications and to interface database systems.

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