Merge Replication in Enterprise 2005 to Express 2005

I implemented a merge replication publication on a SQL Server 2005
Enterprise instance on a test server. On my laptop I have VS.NET 2005
installed with SQL Server 2005 Express.
It's my understanding that I can subscribe to a publication with
Express. I also have SQL Server Workgroup installed on my laptop so I'm
able to use Management Studio to control the Express instance.
The first issue I encountered was that you cannot subscribe to a
publication if you are not on the same network as the publishing
instance (it requires the actual server name). And in lieu of this I
tried to implement Web synchronization, but had problems with SSL
(which is my problem since I'm not entirely familiar with how to
implement SSL certs so they don't show the security warning on the
client without purchasing a certificate).
So then I decided to go ahead and create an account on my laptop and
add it to the domain of the test publishing server. I was then able to
subscribe to the published replication.
So then I look at my Express instance and the synchronization never
runs. In the documentation it says that you're supposed to be able to
right-click on the subscription and "View Synchronization" and force it
to run. This is not available in the Express instance, but it is
available in the Workgroup instance.
So I'm looking at cleaning up my web synchronization issues to make
that work, but I see two issues here.
1) Why do I have to specify the "real name" of the publishing database?
Why can't I access it like any other sql server via an IP address? This
seems like a highly restrictive implementation of replication to me.
2) Why do I have to implement SSL for replication? I understand the
need for security, but that should be left to me to implement. I
shouldn't be forced to use SSL as my security layer.
3) Why doesn't Express have "View Synchronization"?
Any help here is greatly appreciated.
David CornelsonRetry #1
Anyone?