Microsoft has a long history in databases, producing one of the most popular database systems on the planet, Microsoft's SQL Server. Over the years, Microsoft has improved SQL Server, and they have always provided a development or personal version for programmers to use. This means programmers don't need to pay outrageous licensing fees to simply develop against SQL Server, and then pay those fees again when the application is deployed. In Microsoft's latest implementations of SQL Server, this development version is called SQL Server Express. Both Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (which we will use) and its recently released SQL Server 2008 come in Express versions.
Licensing for these versions is also very advantageous to our project, as the use of the Express version is free. That's right, a fully functional Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) that can be used for no charge. There are limitations such as the size of the database and the lack of management tools...