We’ve been discussing with customers and partners and with people inside Microsoft about how we can improve accessibility to the sample code, and move samples into a more community based approach.  As a result of all these discussions, we’re moving to a new form of releasing samples, and a new way of including you into that process.  You can find the result of our work at http://codeplex.com/SqlServerSamples.  This is a toplevel project which links off to more specific projects.  The projects fall into several different categories:

  1. Product samples.  These are the same samples that shipped in the SQL Server 2005 box, and we expect that most of them will continue to ship in future releases.  They are more accessible because instead of shipping in one large monolithic installer, there is an installer per technology (Analysis Services, Integration Services, Reporting Services, Engine, Data Programming (data access), Service Broker, Scripts (administrative), XML, End to End (integrated, covering several different technology areas), and the sample databases.  The source code for these samples is also available online without requiring installation.  So if there is just a little snippet of code you need from a particular sample, you can drill into the source control system just using your web browser and see the code.
  2. SQL Server Community Samples.  These are samples we’ve published, but are not necessarily taking contributions on.  They are a way for many different teams at Microsoft, MVPs, and other customers and partners to publish samples and share them with a broad community.  Like all the sample projects on CodePlex (including the product samples) there are forums where ideas, questions, and concerns can be discussed.  You can access that feature on the Discussions tab of the project.  Also there is an Issue Tracker tab where you can file bugs and check the status of bugs.
  3. Featured Community Projects.  These are samples where it will be possible for customers and partners to start and lead their own projects and/or work with folks at Microsoft on sample projects.  There is a VSTS based source code control system hosted on CodePlex that makes working together on projects easy.  It is possible that samples from either of the two previous categories could migrate to this category if there is sufficient interest.  Use the forums to request that a sample in a different category move to this one.

Every project at CodePlex that we highlight on the http://codeplex/SqlServerSamples page will have someone who is actively monitoring the forums and possibly the issue tracking area (if support is offered) to make sure that customers and partners have a great experience using this new interactive approach to samples.  We value your feedback and we’ll work with you to deliver the best possible experience we can for the entire SQL Server community.  Thank you for participating.