>- Iron Python (then extrapolate out to other .Net languages)
Don't really know much about it, other than it has some positive critics, esspecially from the VFP crowd.

Not sure what you want to extrapolate

>- SQL Server - make sure you read about all editions
I'm using SQL2000, going to upgrade to 2005 somewhere this year. I'm however aware of many of the new features in there. Not sure what really makes the difference here from an application development pov. There is not really much that would justify SQL2005 over SQL2000 for the average front end application.

Tell me what make you think that we don't know SQL Server??

OTOH, I've seen people on the .NET side claiming knowing SQL server making statments about SQL that really makes you wonder they know what SQL server is about. What its strong and weak points are. How you effectively should use SQL server. The average .NET developer does not know squat about how the SQL engine works under the hood. How SQL statements are optimized and how its using resources. How and on what level concurrency is handled. To be honest the level of expertise of SQL up here is rather limited AFAICS.

>- LINQ

Though LINQ is a step forward in respect of handling local data, it still has a long way to go. It is not scalable and flexible enough and has some serious limitations to be a real master in handling local data.

>>If you can draw up a list, then we can talk through that one by one.