I agree that there are cases where MSDE could be usefull. However, the real strength in SQL Server lies with it's technologies which would normally exceed the needs of five concurrent users. Therefore, I still can't see how MSDE can be justified for use beyond a small set of circumstances albeit a good prototyping tool.
I must say that Roxanne's point concerning offline processing with MSDE is the best argument yet for it's use, but only when full-blown SQL Server is already being employed.
>OK John, consider this scenario:
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>I have a data-set that will never grow beyond 10 mb's. However, the data set contains confidential information and needs inherent security. Also, because of certain requirements, a detailed transaction log needs to be kept.
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>Is the data-set small? Yes.
>Will DBF's work? No.
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>I could have taken this example further to really skew it toward SQL-Server, or some other server RDBMS. Then again, I did'nt have to.
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>This is an interesting discussion. Let's keep it going...
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>If an application is never going to grow beyond a set, reasonable amount of users I was advocating sticking with the good ole DBF format.
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- Jeff