One of the things that annoys me about SharePoint is the way in which it automatically names the databases, even when you don’t use the wizard (don’t get me started on that). One thing you can’t do when you run the configuration wizard to create a brand new farm is to specify the database name for the central administration database. Instead you end up with something like “Content_Admin_abcdefg0093857378383”, if this annoys you as much as it does me then there is a solution.

Microsoft SQL Express offers so much when evaluating a persistence store for your own applications, especially if you are targeting Windows and utilising the .Net framework. SQL Express offers pretty much most of the common features available in the full blown SQL Server which makes development and switching between SQL Server and SQL Express pretty seamless. However, there is one major factor which I would reccomend you consider… Deployment. You would expect the deployment of SQL Express to be as easy as installing say the .