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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.
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>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.
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>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.
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>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.

Hello Craig,

Native SQL security remains available with MSDE but integrated security is available only with Windows NT.

Other limitations of MSDE, regardless of the OS, are that it cannot be a publisher in transactional replication and multiple transaction processes across servers cannot include any machines running MSDE.

I intend to use MSDE not in the intent to upgrade to SQL 7 but to downgrade from it. I'm in the process of building a 3-tier system which uses SQL 7 as the data server. The application along with all of its data must be burned on a CD on a regular basis for off-site support, on laptops, in a non-connected environment. MSDE will serve as a lightweight means of providing functionality without rewritting any code.