The site we developed and designed in our book is based around the Microsoft SQL Express database engine. While this engine is quite robust, we mostly did this because of the cost involved, or lack thereof. Due to the nature of the database being a file-based engine, there are a number of hosting providers, and if you are going to use a third-party host, that may not allow you to use SQLExpress. You may also determine that your site will be a heavily used site with thousands of users. If this is the case, you may want to look at using the "full" version of Microsoft SQL Server. With this, you would have all of the additional capabilities, depending on the specific version you were to use, as well as the more robust engine. I highly recommend you go to the Microsoft web site and look at the different options available when choosing your database engine, and then use that in correlation with your needs and what your hosting provider may offer.
One of the best things...