[Mono-osx] asp.net database coding with vmware alternative

[Bill Nalen]

I have a bunch of regular web applications that I'm working on.  
Currently I'm using vs.net 2008 in vmware's Fusion. While this works  
and development with vs.net 2008 is pretty quick, I hate having to run  
vmware. I'd rather just use Xcode and I've setup a solution using a  
makefile and a shell script to launch xsp2. I get by doing it this way  
but it's a lot of work since I'm used to vs.net helping a lot. I can  
get by with almost everything (no debugger, bad highlighting, no code  
completion, etc.) but the database part seems to cause me the most pain.

My web applications currently talk to a SQL Server database, the  
express version while I'm in vs.net 2008 and the regular version when  
I deploy. I'd like to hear if anyone has a solution to hooking to a  
database on OS X. My solutions so far are to:
	1. connect to our test sql server database on the web. Works fine but  
it means I have to be connected to do work
	2. use a local mysql database. Works okay too, but it means I have to  
have a class that hooks to either database since their sql statements  
are not 100% compatible and I have to maintain another database with  
less than optimal tools on OS X (sql grinder).

Any other suggestion?

Thanks
Bill