Is SQL Server Express' 4GB limit affected by FILESTREAM enabled columns?

Question

I have read some conflicting reports on the net about whether the 4GB limit of SQL Server Express takes into account the contents of FILESTREAM. Can anyone say for certain citing official documentation whether SQL Server Express storage limit is affected by FILESTREAM contents?

Answer 1

SQL Server Express supports FILESTREAM. The 4-GB database size limit does not include the FILESTREAM data container.

From: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb895334.aspx

Answer 2

According to Mike Wachal (a program manager in the SQL Server group) in this forum post (archive), the pointer information to the blobs is included, but the blobs themselves are not:

A quick note on the 4 GB limit: This is applied per database and includes all the user data included the primary (mdf) and secondary (ndf) data files. Log files (ldf) are not included in this count. The behavior is that your database will be read-only when the limit is reached and will error if you try to insert additional data. As pointed out by Papy, there is a new feature in SQL 2008 called Filestream that allows for the storage of BLOB data directly on disk with a pointer to it stored in the database. The on disk BLOB does not count toward the 4 GB limit but the pointer information does (although it is much smaller).

I know it's not "official documentation", but it does come from someone within the SQL Server group.