The first Sql Everywhere CTP was realeased early this week which brings the Sql Mobile world to the desktop. Anyone familiar with working with the .NET Compact Framework and Sql Mobile will know the problems creating automated tests for a database application. The fundamental problem has always been that the database needed to be hosted on a device or emulator. Now, we'll be able run and test data access code on the development machine.

All this is great, except that it's not supported for ASP.NET applications! Steve Lasker from Microsoft has a blog post that highlights the design decisions around this, but I can't help thinking that it was a little misguided. What's the problem with a hosted environment? When a website needs to hold only a little content in a db, why should we have to use Sql Express? This is especially a problem in a place like NZ where hosting companies want to charge you a fortune for just 25Mb of Sql space.

Just to make sure, I tried creating and connecting to a database in ASP.NET. Surprisingly it let me create the database but it didn't let be read from it.