>>MSDE is SQL Server with some limitations.
>
> Like you and many others, I too was under the impression that MSDE was a flavor of SQL Server.

I think that it is mostly semantics, but maybe to shed some light on things...

One of my clients sent a programmer to NOLA, and he reported that one of the presenters (Duffy I think) had the crowd reciting "MSDE is SQL Server!".