Is aspnetdb.mdf ever meant to be used in a production online web application?

Question

Is the generated aspnetdb.mdf ever meant to be used online? It has been a while since I looked at it, but from what I remember the generated username database could only be configured and maintained locally within your visual studio environment. Is this still true? Does anyone use this online for big apps?

EDIT:

I ask because all the examples I see just use the built in VS tools to build the example database, but I haven't found where they did a "real" one online.

EDIT:

It just seemed like a big let down to know that you could create this username/password db for use in your projects and then find out you really can't.

Answer 1

configured and maintained locally within your visual studio environment. Is this still true

No, it's not true.

You can use aspnet_regsql scripts to generate all the required tables/scripts/views in your database, and you don't have to use the aspnetdb.mdf.

After all, it's just a bunch of database objects required by the membership/security api.

Answer 2

It is simply a SQL Express db. You can certainly maintain the membership information in aspnetdb.mdf through your own administration pages if you want to.

As a matter of fact, if you're going to use SQL Express as your database (very limited scenarios where this would be appropriate) you could add the rest of your tables/sprocs to aspnetdb.mdf and use just the one db rather than using aspnetdb.mdf for membership and creating another one for your other needs.

This article has information on the limitations of sql express as well as links to the featureset (2005, 2008)

Basically the limitations are:

1. Only 1 CPU. If a system has more than 1 SQL Express 2008 will still run but limit itself to 1 CPU.
2. RAM: 1 GB. More RAM can exist, but again SQL Express 2008 will only make use of a maximum 1 GB.
3. Max Database Size: 4 GB