Are there any document-databases, similar to MongoDB, that run within an ASP.NET web application, and could be hosted on a server without any unique machine configuration?
I'm asking this because the hosting provider I'm currently with only support SQL Server 2008 as a database, but I'd like to run my website off a document database.
(Or am I better off going with a specialized database host, such as MongoHQ)?
I currently use MongoDB for ASP.NET apps and it works quite well ... however we have our own servers.
The question here seems more to do with the host then MongoDB, or CouchDB, etc.
In this case, yes ... I would say a good option would be to go with a hosting service like MongoHQ (they have quite reasonable rates compared to SQL Server hosts for example.)
That said why not just get a VPS that gives you total control of you Windows server?
You can find a Window VPS for reasonable prices and install whatever you want on them ... including MongoDB.