What are the limitations of MSDE?
All SQL Server 2000 versions (as well as several other Microsoft products; see KB #324998)
ship with SQL Server 2000 Desktop Edition, often referred to as MSDE (Microsoft Data Engine) 2.0.
Essentially, MSDE is a version of SQL Server that you can distribute with applications. As such,
it is slightly lighter weight, and has some notable restrictions. Other than the following list,
however, MSDE and the other editions of SQL Server have very similar behavior and performance
characteristics (see Article #2345 for a technical comparison).

an MSDE database can be no larger than 2 GB (this includes MDF and NDF files only
— log sizes are not included in the size limit);

performance throttling occurs when there are more than five (5) concurrent workload batches in progress
(this does *not* mean 5 concurrent *users* — with a properly build application, you can certainly support more.
For more detailed information about the query governor, see this MSDN topic);


MSDE cannot be a publisher in transaction replication, and when acting as publisher in all other types of replication,
must also be the distributor;


MSDE does not ship with GUI administrative tools such as Enterprise Manager or Query Analyzer
-- see Article #2442 for alternative administration tools;


MSDE does not support SQL Mail (see Article #2403 for alternatives);


MSDE does not offer OLAP / data warehousing capabilities; and,


MSDE does not come with Books Online, but you can download it from Microsoft downloads (updated January, 2004).