SQL Server and ASP.NET encompassed by Amazon

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is getting chummier with Microsoft all the time. The latest example? Microsoft developers, and there are a ton of them, can now more easily write code again AWS.

In particular SQL Server and ASP.NET coders can either migrate existing code or write fresh stuff to run up in the Amazon cloud, thanks to two new Amazon services.
1. Amazon Relational Database Services (Amazon RDS) for Microsoft SQL Server
2. AWS Elastic Beanstalk for support of ASP.NET

In the case of SQL, only relatively new versions apply -- SQL Server 2008 R2 and the spankin' new SQL Server 2012 to be exact.

That means AWS supports a rich complement of commercial and open databases, including MySQL, Oracle, and SQL: Express. Low-end SQL installs (a paltry 20 GB) are free.

ASP.NET joins the already supported PHP and Java.