Visual Studio 2005 Standard and SQL Integration (or not)

[FastEddie]

The trial period of my Visual Studio 2005 Professional demo is about to run out so I need to decide whether I should buy the standard version now or hold out for the professional version later. I mostly build small business apps for both Windows and the Web.

Most of the time Access works as a data store for the type of app I build but once in a while I do need to use SQL Server.

I have looked at Microsoft's comparison here and read Paul Thrurrot's comparison here, which I highly recommend if you are trying to figure out the differences between each edition.

For the most part I think the Standard edition will fit my needs, however I am a little confused by this statement from Thurrot's review.

Standard Edition does let you perform local data access from within the traditional languages, and remote data access from Visual Web Developer.

Does that mean you cannot connect to SQL server on a remote machine at all? Wouldn't it be possible to write an app using SQL Server Express and then later (when it is ready to be deployed) modify just the connection string to make it work with the full version of SQL Server whether it is remote or not?

Also when it comes to SQL Server Reporting Services are there any differences between Standard and Pro? Or are there any differences in the Reporting Services depending on whether you use SQL Express or the full version? I have access to both.

Thanks in advance for any help or advice you can provide.

[FastEddie]

Anyone?