The long-awaited upgrade to Microsoft’s SQL Server database will come with a raft of new features when it ships later this year — as well as a price hike of up to 25 percent, Microsoft said on ...

SQL Server 2005 Express Edition will replace Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine as the software maker's lightweight database offering of choice.

Don't need an enterprise-grade database on the cloud? Microsoft offers Azure customers a low-cost, lightweight SQL server option for testing and purposes and apps.