Hi Alan,
With ArcGIS 10.1 you can connect to an enterprise database that does not have an SDE geodatabase repository and create feature classes with a native spatial type. For example, you could connect to a SQL Server database and import/create feature classes with the GEOMETRY or GEOGRAPHY spatial type. However, you can only view this feature class. You cannot perform any edits, or have the feature class participate in any geodatabase functionality (such as replication, topology, geometric networks, relationship classes, network datasets, etc). Essentially, you are getting a 'view' only feature class w/o SDE.