XM and December CTP released!
Okay Ladies and Gents, the December CTP for SQL 2005 and SQL Express is out along with the Preview Edition of Express Manager. Here’s the download URLs. Remember, these bits aren’t even beta quality, so they’ll have issues. Microsoft may or may not help you with those. Also, you’ll need to completely uninstall all previous version of Yukon, Whidbey and other CLR v2.x products (like Express) and then install the updated CLR, reboot and install the new SQL Express version.
IMHO, if you can upgrade to the new CLR, you should. XM may work on the previous CLR bits okay, but…
.NET CLR v2.0.40903.27 (December CTP, 26,046,416 bytes): http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/A/4/9A47D72B-9D98-46CC-87F3-B92E97888E4B/dotnetfx.exe
SQL Server 2005 Express Edition v9.0.981 (December CTP, 39,913,176 bytes): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=66120BE8-826A-482A-8264-B1836F28FD79&displaylang=en
Express Manager (Preview 1, v9.0.981, 1,104,896 bytes): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=66120BE8-826A-482A-8264-B1836F28FD79&displaylang=en
Look for more about XM in my early next week.