Apparently I didn't fully understand the licensing of MSDE, since Microsoft advises us on how to...
Build dynamic, data-driven Web applications with Microsoft ASP.NET and MSDE 2000 using the Workload Governor to limit the number of concurrent operations that the database engine can perform.
[ Using MSDE 2000 in a Web Application (MSDE 2000 Web Resource Kit) ]
This continues with SQL Server 2005 Express, but the connection pool limit seems to have been increased to 25 simultaneous connections.
dasBlog theme modified from "mads simple" theme by Mads Kristensen
Disclaimer The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions.