[dba-SQLServer] Developer Edition v. LocalDB

[Arthur Fuller]

I have been working on a reasonably complex Access app for some time now.
Incidentally, "complex" is a term far too vague for my liking; I prefer the
terms "large" andmany "rich", the former meaning a relatively small number
of tables with many, many rows", the latter meaning many tables, most of
which have a small number of rows.

By these lights, the app of interest is rich rather than large. There are
over 100 tables, about half of which function as lookup tables and rarely
change. The remainder are transactional tables that change very often.

I presented a case to the client for a migration to SQL Server. I explained
the gains, the improved security, the stability. The client is persuaded.
Before the migration, I'm going to clean up the code base of unnecessary
stuff (one-off queries, tables create for testing purposes).

Anyway, to the point at hand. I'm going to use SSMA to perform the
migration. I'm not sure whether I have ever done this before. Most if not
all the time I have begun such an app with SQL Server as the BE to start
with, hence no migration phase.

1. The client himself has no need of the Developer version. He will be
running an instance of LocalDB, since the whole thing will reside on a
single laptop. My first question concerns LocalDB. Given that my
environment will be the Developer version, can I / should I install LocalDB
on my box alongside Developer? When it comes time to ship a new version to
the client, would I just copy the database from Dev to LocalDB and ship it
that way?
2. Should I plan to migrate the queries to SQL views, which would remove
them from the FE, which I consider a good thing. I don't see a reason to
leave them in the FE, where I consider them just so much clutter. Opinions?

-- 
Arthur