>> I should have said that long ago:) Today I'd suggest SSE instead. MSDE and SSE are both limited free versions of SQL server (SSE - SQL Server Express 2005). MSDE have 2Gb and 5 users limit where SSE increased limits to 4Gb and 25 users. <<

That's an easy decision to make, and in fact no decision will be necessary. Microsoft says SQL Server Express is a replacement for MSDE and MSDE will go away. The name change is to make it clear this is a version of SQL Server, which was not clear from the cryptic "MSDE". The increased capacities of 4 GB maximum database size and 25 concurrent users (also 1 GB of memory) are bonuses.

With those limits I can see SSE being used for deployment, not just as an affordable development environment. The 4 GB size limit is a deal-killer for the application I work on but I am sure there are many business apps that will run just fine with SSE.

Mike