This may be old news for you, but I’ve just discovered that MSDE will not be supported on Vista. After thinking about it, it is not a big surprise. Microsoft is promoting SQL Server 2005 really hard. Indeed, SQL Server 2005 Express edition seems a lot better than the old MSDE. It has no workload governor for example.

However, that means that a lot of applications out there that relies on MSDE will be broken on Vista. Most of my custom projects use MSDE/SQL Server 2000 as the database engine and, although users are instructed to install the database on a dedicated server, I’m sure that at some point, some of them will try to install the database on Vista.

The good news is that most apps will work by default on SQL Server 2005. However, some install scripts and documentation will need to be updated. (Not to mention that those apps should be tested again; especially the database connection code).

More info from Microsoft: MSDE on Windows Vista FAQ