Usable for development, testing, or light production scenarios, SQL CE 4 works with existing .Net data APIs and supports a SQL Server-compatible query syntax. "This means you can use existing data APIs like ADO.Net as well as use higher-level ORMs like Entity Framework and NHibernate with SQL CE. This enables you to use the same data programming skills and data APIs you know today," said Guthrie.

Version 4 has been engineered to ensure that SQL CE will not crash or deadlock when used in a multi-threaded server scenario, such as with ASP.Net.

Microsoft's Orchard 1.0, released this week as well, provides a content management and blogging system along with enabling development and management of Web sites without having to write code. "Orchard itself is built as an ASP.Net MVC 3 application using Razor view templates (and by default uses SQL CE 4 for data storage). Developers wishing to extend an Orchard site with custom functionality can open and edit it as a Visual Studio project -- and add new ASP.Net MVC Controllers/Views to it," said Guthrie.

Also offered by Microsoft this week were Microsoft Web Deploy V2 and Web Farm Framework V2. "These services provide a flexible and powerful way to deploy ASP.Net applications onto either a single server, or across a Web farm of machines," Guthrie said.