Don't think MSDE 2000 can scale?
Many people are just flat out confused about the MSDE governor and whether MSDE can scale.
Well, go read this [0] for some interesting details (oh, I wrote it). There's also a walk-through (pick your tool [VS, Web Matrix, or just Notepad] and language [VB.NET or C#]).
End of line.
[0] http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnmsde2kwrk/html/msde2000webapp.asp