Scott Swiggart argues that SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, the replacement for MSDE is different from the other Express Editions since it will strongly appeal to professional developers.  He also highlights my favourite feature:

‘with SQL Express, you can connect to a database by simply pointing to the database file (.mdf). This makes SQL databases as easy to use as Access, and installing a database is nothing more complicated than copying a file’

Hopefully ISPs will pick up on this so that I can deploy a proper SQL Server database to my website as simply as FTP’ing the file.  It should also signal the end of the Jet database engine (hooray!).  This justifies the ASP.NET 2.0 team’s decision to cut support for the Access Data Providers.

[Update: Ken Brubaker agrees with me that SQL Server Express will mean that Jet can be replaced. Kent Tegels also has some more details on the 'AttachDBFileName' option the some of the differences between SQL versions]