A round-up of the free Express editions of Visual Studio 2012 & SQL Server 2012

Compared to 7 editions of Visual Studio 2010, the freely downloadable Visual Studio 2012 Express has the following 4 editions:

• Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web
• Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows 8
• Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows Desktop
• Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Express 2012 - provides small teams of up to five developers with source code control, work item tracking, and build automation for their software projects so that they can deliver predictable results.

Visual Studio Express Editions support connecting to TFS Express

Some interesting features of Visual Studio 2012 from the launch video -

• End tags will automatically change when the start tag is modified
• Full Intellisense for HTML5 elements & attributes
• VS Automatically inserts event handler & opens code-behind when you write an event declaratively for a server control
• Vendor CSS prefixes are automatically added for some CSS3 style definitions & there is also Intellisense for those prefixes. Invalid properties are validated.
• Full Intellisense support for CSS pseudo-elements
• Color picker with Opacity (for specifying transperancy) slider opens up when you type color: CSS property.
• Full support for Intellisense around jQuery

SQL Server 2012 Express comes in 4 flavors as well:

• SQL Server Express (Database Only) - runs as a service.
• SQL Server Express with Tools - includes SQL Server Management Studio Express (SSMSE)
• SQL Server Express with Advanced Services - includes SSMSE, SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT), full-text search, and the Reporting Services subsystem.
• SQL Server Express LocalDB -  new option with the SQL Server 2012 release. Unlike the other versions of SQL Server Express, LocalDB runs in user mode—not as a service. LocalDB is for developers and is primarily intended to help you test code for your deployments. This edition uses the same sqlservr.exe program as the other versions and is 100 percent code compatible with the other editions of SQL Server. LocalDB has a zero configuration installation.

Some points to note about SQL Server 2012 Express:

• SQL Server Express can support multiple databases where each database can be up to 10GB.
• SQL Server 2012 Express has no limits on incoming connections or workload other than the CPU and memory limitations. And it comes in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
• It’s fully capable of supporting production applications for small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs). 

Related - Can SQL Server 2008 Express be used on a Production Server?