I'm building a website in ASP.NET VB (not going to change language at this point), and I'd like to interact with either MS SQL server or MySQL. In developing the site, I need to test my code locally before deploying on the internet. How can I achieve this without paying for the same software that will be used by the web hosting server? Can I download MS SQL Server Compact Edition, code to that, then just upload to a site using SQL Server? Or is there some way to develop for free with MySQL?

The free database engines from Microsoft are fully compatible with SQL server, the only differences are the supplied tools, the maximum database size and the number of connections.

MySQL is free so you can download and install exactly the same software as used by your web host.

You can download SQL Server Express edition for free from microsoft. If you have the express edition of visual web developer then I believe that you have it already. In any case you can download it seperately. You can get it at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/express...