SQL Server User Instance Question

I was wondering whether anybody could confirm an assumption for me. The information on SQL Server Express talks a lot about its special "User Instance" mode and how it can help to simplify deployment because you can go back to just copying in a file to set up your database, and how this is great for dealing with limited user security environments. However, I have some questions surrounding whether or not this is really as great as it's cracked up to be -- I saw somewhere, for example, that made it sound like you have to be coding your application in .NET in order to use it; and it sounded like it pretty much gives the end user full access to their personal SQL Server instance, which I might not necessarily want from an application perspective. The assumption that I wanted to confirm was this€¦ Let's say that you're NOT using the "User Instance" mode. What do you then need to do in order to create the initial shell of your application database at deployment time? I was assuming that you end up having to have some sort of SQL script that does the database creation instead (including, I assume, assigning proper rights to tables to BUILTINUsers as necessary). Is that correct?