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>How much value is there to real stored procedures and good database security? Remember, MSDE is scaled for 5 CONCURRENT users, many small businesses can easily cope with that. The problem will be in the mid-size or rapidly growing small business. I agree, SQL will cost more but you get more.

Yes, 5 concurrent users is different than 5 users, but when you start talking about 100 users, it is easy to get 5+ concurrent users.

I haven't looked that much at MSDE. How does the security model work on Win9x. What about performance? If run on NT, will it integrate with NT security?

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>I suppose the best thing to do is to program for any backend, advise the customer of the options, and let them make the decision. That's what n-tier is all about, I suppose.

That's nice in theory, but really hard to do in practice. There are still things you'll need to handle differently depending on backend.