Should this be included into a Windows server? b/c I was looking around at the Microsoft website, and the Enterprise Edition was like $20,000. Thats a tad outrageous. Can anyone recommend any alternitives?

You can get cheaper legitimate licenses than that through an MSP or MCP, its advisable to just buy one copy with around 50-60CALs and install it on a very powerful server, and then just let people connect to it remotely.

Originally posted by jason012
Should this be included into a Windows server? b/c I was looking around at the Microsoft website, and the Enterprise Edition was like $20,000. Thats a tad outrageous. Can anyone recommend any alternitives?

MS SQL Server Desktop Edition (MSDE) is free and you can do a lot with it. You can also download the 120 day trial version of the MS SQL Server Enterprise Edition and just install the tools like Enterprise Manager...

lol what would I do after the 120 days, and would you suggest, honestly, running the ms sql MSDE like that? Could it handle it?

For a web server you typically buy a processor license insted of CALs. The price is around $5000.

yeah I seen that, but I dont have $5000 right now and I was hoping to get a windows server up in the next month :( with mssql

MSDE is free, but I have never read a definative answer as to what the limit to users and db size is. You can always install MySQL instead, it is still free and getting better with every release.

FYI on the 120 trial of MSSQL the only thing that expires is the SQL portion. You can continue to use Enterprise Manager to manage MSDE. I don't know if that is legal with MS licensing though.

Originally posted by jason012
lol what would I do after the 120 days, and would you suggest, honestly, running the ms sql MSDE like that? Could it handle it?

MSDE works exactly the same as the full version with one or two limitations like maximum database size is 2GB and the maximum amount of concurrent users or transactions hitting the database at the SAME TIME is 5. This means you could even have 50 people looking at data through the web but only 5 dynamic connections can occur at the same time. Connections are not static - they are dynamic - i.e. once you've got the data - the connection is closed until the next request; thus keeping resources open and free. If you look into it you might find it can handle your application.

Someody else already said the tools don't expire. The 120 days only applies to the full SQL Server.

Has anyone actually used MSDE in a webserver environment? Not just a one-site server? I'd be surprised if you didn't run into problems but am open to others' experience!

For SQL Server, the reality is that it is overkill for the majority of users, but folk tend to like it because it's easy and familiar. Even though MySQL is free and very good. You really should not run SQL Server on the same machine as you are using for webserving, for both performance and security reasons.

Some datacentres will rent you space on their own SQL Server machines. Or, you can opt to rent SQL Server on a dedicated machine for a reasonable amount per month -- most Windows-friendly datacentres will do this (eg servermatrix, rackmy, fastservers...). One thing to watch for is you want to make sure the database server to webserver traffic is not billed as if it were going over the net -- you might need a separate connection to your webservers through a switch.

Originally posted by saxroots
... the maximum amount of concurrent users or transactions hitting the database at the SAME TIME is 5

Just to correct this slightly, MSDE will accept more than 5 connections, but it slows down above 5.

JOn

You can find shared sql server from various hosting company such as aspwebhosting.com and maximumasp.com, they also offer sort of virtual dedicated SQL server, which does mean they install just 50 instance of MSSQL on a machine and resell them.
The prices are reasonable.
You can also buy a shared hosting from them (that's shared but on a different machine), and as a start use that configuration.

If you go dedicated you can get SQL license on a per month basis from many companies, the prices usually ranges around 250$/month per processor.

About putting webserver and SQL on the same machine... I don't know... I took into consideration that option once, and I can assume as far as you use different drives, properly configure memory usage, and so on... You can do that. I know many does.

About using mySql, I would warn you about the lack of storeprocedures, xml support, and in general I would not advise anyone to use it for mission critical applications.
But it's free, you can even cluster it for free, and thanks to its simple architecture have very good performance.

Ah, you guys have been more than helpful. What I may do is get a Windows machine up and test the MSDE out on it. See how it works.. get like 5-7 users on it and ill let you guys know what comes up :)

Just to clear up some mis-conceptions about mysql. XML isnt really everything, and creating a simple converter to and from XML is nothing. So that should not be a reason NOT to use mySQL. Stored procedures could hurt development ... if your that type of a developer...... mySQL 5.0 have stored procedures, though it's in alpha.

From what I was told by various people @ RS and here, mySQL is a pure database while MS SQL is not... go figure :)

hehe I see your point, many people tell me to forget about ms sql and just stick with mysql. If people want .net or asp bad enough that they'll convert ;)

blah, nvm :)