ASP.NET - Performance Implications of a sql server database in the app_data folder

Question

The default asp.net membership provider uses a .mdf sql server database file in the app_code database.
How scalable is this in terms of calling a flat file database instead of running it in a standard sql environment?
Is this recommended only for small/medium traffic sites?

Answer 1

It's a reasonable trade off for any site that can run on one server. It's fairly reasonable for small to medium traffic sites.

When you grow to a point of a web farm, then you'll be better off with a separate server. Also, depending on how database dependent your application is, you may find better performance handing off SQL queries to a totally different server/processor to handle the database side.

Answer 2

I wouldn't recommend this for anything but a "learning" project.

For any real application, regardless of size, you don't know what type of "next feature" you will add. You want to have a real independent database in which you can delegate functionality to, in which you can set jobs to run independently, sit on a different HD, maybe splitting it into a different VM?

You can use SQL Express and still be "free', and it is better to do this seperation before the site grows and the DB is harder to move.