Hi

We are a small company and currently cannot afford a licensing of Visual studio 2008 full standard  version. we were considering the express edition which is available for free.

I was wondering if there is any limitation which I have to live with when using express edition? Can I do a full fledge ecommerce web application development or a content management system with express edition of visual studio? 

Hello,

The following links will help you take a decision:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/products/cc149003.aspx

http://joeon.net/post/Which-features-are-missing-from-Visual-Web-Developer-Express.aspx

HTH,
Suprotim Agarwal

This was a great information but I would like to know is there anything as practical experience by someone on express edition which can help me make an informed decision. 

 I used VWD express 2005 to develop and release and asp.net 2.0 without any problems.  I used a full BLL/DAL layer including ObjectDataStores after using SQLDataStore as a prototype.  I used VWD to upload the finished project to an IIS server for deployment.   While there are features that are useful in the professional version (and I wish I had it), I was able to do "real" work with VWD express.

What application did you develop? Is it now live?

Can we do the same thing in 2008 version? 

 Yes the application pseodu-live. it is going through acceptance testing by the client now...The application has been installed on a full IIS and SQL Server for this testing...after which it will be posted let through the firewall to the Internet.   I used VWD Express to deploy the code and after I figured out how to do it , it was simple and easy to deploy.

 I am only using VWD Express 2008 on a test machine to see how the new changes will work...I am going to port my code to .net 3.5 for version 2 of my application.   From what I have seen of VWD Express 2008 it is even better than Express 2005.   The main thing I like about VWD Express 2008 is that we now have projects and web applications support where 2005 only had Web Site support (in the express version).   The one gotcha here is the that the web application support is in the SP1 release of 2008 which was JUST released (May 12).    The SP1 release also migrates from SQL Server express 2005 to 2008 and I am having problems getting this part to work....I know that others have it working, but I have not (yet).