>>>I'm not the one to ask when it comes to MS SQL - maybe someone else will jump in.
>>>But FWIW I'd probably look at shipping the mdfs and attaching them to the server instance - but I've *no* idea whether that's a good option :-{
>>>I'd be interested to know how you end up doing this tho.

Well... so far I've learned a bunch. And some of this is smoother than I thought.

Setup will not install the SQL Express 2005 prerequisite if SQL Express 2008 is already installed.

Entity Framework does not balk if you try and run a 2005 project on a 2008 server.

I thought I would have a problem with the 2005 SMO DLLs on 2008 and did not.

So much data out there from the RC phases of 2008 it's hard do sort out fact from fiction.

I'm anticipating running into non standard instance names and users privilege problems. But at this point, I think I can deal with those as they occur.

Still trying to decide on distributing the MDFs or just running a script. I'll need to run scripts for upgrades, so I have to have that capability in any case.

I also haven't decided on using SMO, Process.Start(sqlcmd), or breaking the SQL on the "GO" words and using the normal ExecuteNonQuery.

If anyone has any feed back on those I'd love to hear it.