[BobLewiston]

I'm working through the lessons at Programmer’s Heaven's "C# School" tutorial (C# School, lesson #1 - Programmer's Heaven), and I'm currently on lesson 13, "Data Access in .Net using ADO.Net", so of course I've been trying to connect to Programmer’s Heaven's SQL and MS Access / OleDb databases. Unfortunately, they're now offline. Can anyone please tell me; are there other such databases available for those learning ADO to practice connecting to?

[office politics]

ms sample databases

Northwind for 2000

adventureworks for 2005+

Download details: SQL Server 2005 Samples and Sample Databases

[BobLewiston]

office politics:

The link you provided is to a microsoft.com download webpage, which has a link to Microsoft SQL Server Community & Samples - Home. Here there are links for various product samples. As far as I know as a newbie, I just want to download a sample database or two and nothing else, right?

On this webpage, the only reference to Northwind is under Sample Databases, but there are no releases yet available. I could download Microsoft Sample Databases, though - should I do that?

Or should I click the link for "Download the AdventureWorks family of sample databases" (which takes me to a webpage whose URL for some reason can't be made to display in Preview Post)? On that webpage there are 3 links for what is apparently all the same download (SQL2008.AdventureWorks_All_Databases.ia64.msi) and 1 link for SQL2008.AdventureWorks_All_Databases.zip. (Incidentally, all 4 links are for applications. <-- ?) Which (if any of these) should I download?

[BobLewiston]

office politics:

And so I download these sample databases to my own computer and access them from there, right?