As promised in my last post, I am going to explain the technical part of my recent photoblog migration, which was also described on PixyBlog's website. I know that many users of OneReaction Photoblog (the software I used to run my photoblog) are not software developers. Thus, the following post might be a bit too technical for them. I apologize for that. Software developers (even those who don't care about photoblogs) who want to know more about LINQ to SQL and see some real code in action might be interested by this article.

SQL server 2005 Express Edition is a great  (and free !) database tool from Microsoft. While the Express Edition doesn't have the full capabilities of SQL Server 2005 Standard or Enterprise editions, it is sufficient for running your average data-based website. Unfortunately, backing up an SQL database is not an easy task. You're never sure to backup everything that is needed in case of a database problem and the Express edition of SQL Server doesn't provide a utility like the Standard or Enterprise editions. Expressmaint is a free utility that comes in two flavours : a stored procedure that you can execute on your SQLServer Express and a stand-alone executable that you can call from a scheduled task on your PC or your web/database Server. This is the solution I'm currently using for my blog and my photoblog.