Either edition is fine - web part development only needs either the C# or VB.Net
environment, and the template package from MSDN.

Is there anyway in which i can trap the download event of a
document library. And how can we make an event handler talk to a web part. I
mean if i

extract some information in an event handler . How can i make the web part
use those attributes .

Events handlers are asynchronous so there's no trapping possible. For the event
handler -> web part communication the simplest method would be to have the event
handler write the information to a data source the web part can easily read
from, like a list.

If you need to plug into SQL for Data connection management etc.., VS
standard (which I have) doesn't seem to want to play....
I wish I had dropped the couple hundred extra bucks for pro...

I suppose upgrade is always an option if needed...

Asside from that, we picked up a new Dell poweredge with Enterprise
edition because we want to deploy in an intranet/extranet environment to
manage form and data handling "automatically". SBS doesn't want to do
that, not to mention the license scheme seems messed up on SBS 2003.
I.E. 75 max users on an open website?!
Will we need to uninstall SBS and go with standard to do this? Or can
SBS remain as the domain controller while we take advantage of
Enterprises license scheme? I'm still a little confused how the
different platforms play together.. Seems like quite a few "and's if's
and but's" exist in the different platforms.