One Microsoft data technology that is not mentioned in the book - and should have been - is called MSDE - the most recent version is currently being called MSDE 2000 but the Microsoft marketing gnomes are starting to refer to it only by it's full name: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine.
For a long time, Microsoft had two quite different ways to access databases that you had to choose between:
- Jet (used in Access)
- SQL Server
If your application was targeted at a small number of desktop PC's, you normally used Jet (that is, Access). But programmers discovered that Jet just didn't "scale up" enough for corporate systems and lacked sophisticated features. Developers found out the hard way that when their systems started to get really popular, they would have to make a lot of code changes to migrate their Jet applications to Microsoft's industrial strength database, SQL Server.
