Just a quick note to let everyone know that you can get the February CTP of SQL Server at http://connect.microsoft.com/.  This is a very exciting CTP and I expect other bloggers here will fill you in on the details very soon.

There are samples which go along with this CTP posted at http://CodePlex.com/SqlServerSamples (our portal page on CodePlex).  There are some new ODBC and OLE DB samples plus the Integration Services tutorials are back.  The readme for this release (and previous releases) is located here.  Detailed information about the new samples can be found on the appropriate project pages for those samples (Data Programmability and Integration Services).  There are also lots of new cool community projects featured on our portal page. 

SQL Server 2005 samples and sample databases are also still available on CodePlex.  Just be sure to click on SQL Server 2005 SP2a when you use the Releases tab to download the samples and sample databases because the default release is SQL Server 2008.

We welcome feedback on samples in the forums for each project on CodePlex.  We welcome feedback and bugs reports for either SQL Server or the samples at http://connect.microsoft.com/.  Thank you very much for your participation in the SQL Server community.

Bonnie Feinberg
Senior Software Development Engineer
Microsoft SQL Server Community