Rick Belluzzo was charged with overhauling Microsoft's consumer strategy and filling the difficult number-three spot under Gates and Ballmer

Microsoft unifies and formalizes previously separate and ad hoc embedded partner support programs, and centralizes technical information that was previously hard to find

ADO.NET, the data access architecture introduced with the .NET development platform, has new capabilities for incorporating XML and building scalable Web applications

Provides an overview of Microsoft data access APIs that pre-date ADO.NET, including ODBC, OLE DB and ADO

Overview of the three main components of ADO.NET: DataSet, DataAdapter, and DataReader

Screen shot illustrating how Visual Studio .NET extends the previous version's AutoComplete feature to include data access

Depicts inter-relationship between ADO.NET, managed providers, OLE DB providers, and ODBC Drivers

The Software Developers Kit augments existing product documentation with sample code and wizards that run under Microsoft's older Visual Studio 6.0 development environment

Explains BizTalk's role as an application integration technology

Explains the two major components of BizTalk Server--a messaging engine and an orchestration engine--and how they interact