Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Dedicated Server : The Planet - MS SQL Server 2000 Workgroup Edition?

[alexis]

Hi, does anybody have experiences with the new offering from The Planet?

Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Workgroup Edition

I am thinking about getting a new Windows server with them and I'm not sure if using their SQL shared space or maybe this new offering.

The Windows server will be running a .NET application which needs its own MS SQL database, it will have medium usage from its users.

Any suggestions?

[atchoooo]

If you do not have too much concurrent users, try Miscrosoft SQL MSDE, it's free : http://www.microsoft.com/sql/msde/

Regards,

[alexis]

Hi Martin, thanks for your advice, actually I think MS SQL Express 2005 is the current "replacement" for MSDE.

However, the client who will using this server asked for SQL Server and I don't think MSDE or Express would fit to his needs.

Any experiences with SQL shared space or Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Workgroup Edition at The Planet?

Thanks!

[atchoooo]

I would tend to think that a shared space will give you a performance similar to using MSDE or MS SQL Express 2005. With a shared database the performance will depend on how many other SQL users are on the server and how much resources they use. For the SQL Server 2000 Workgroup Edition, I think Workgroup edition would fit your needs, look at the overview here on Microsoft's web site it looks like a full SQL Server Version but with a maximum of 2GB RAM & 2 Processors, it is probably enough for you.

[alexis]

Thank you very much Martin

[hiepgia]

Thank you for helping me in learning!

[tical]

Indeed MSDE will not fit the bill, unless the application load is *extremely* light. MSDE is limited to 5 concurrent operations per second according to Microsoft's website. Their statements are very vague, so we don't know if this means "5 concurrent statements" or "5 concurrent tasks that are internal to SQL server, which you'll never know about, because you only see the end result." If you're using a shared SQL server, there's no guarantee that your performance will be any better than running MSDE on your own box.

My recommendation would be to use MSDE for now, unless the app is so database-intensive that it exceeds the "5 concurrent operations" rule (whatever that may be), in which case you'd want the Workgroup edition. The new version of MSDE, which will be called SQL Server 2005 Express, will support an unlimited number of concurrent operations, and will be limited only by memory (1GB) and database size (4GB) according to Microsoft's website. I'm assuming it's also limited to a single processor; I haven't found any documentation on their site that clarifies this.

p.s. SQL 2005 licensing will treat dual core processors as a single processor. Way to go Microsoft!

[alexis]

Hi, one more question, I've visited Microsoft site and saw they listdifferent kind of licenses for SQL Server, ¿am I right to think that for web based applications I would need a processor license? There's no way to know how many users will be using a web application.

Regards!

[eddy2099]

If you are going with The Planet's MS SQL Server 2000 Workgroup Edition, the only licensing would be based on the number of processors. They do not have CALs licensing. That should make live a lot easier.

[alexis]

Great!

Thanks!

[cprompt]

SQL Server Workgroup Edition is SQL Server Standard without a lot of the really high-end stuff like "Advanced Analysis Features for OLAP", "Data Warehousing Alliance" and "Distributed Partitioned Views". If you really need those features, then you can afford to go SQL Server Standard!

However, MSDE is SQL Server but without the Enterprise Manager (it's all command-line based) and with the workload governor.

SQL Server Express, on the other hand, is more like SQL Server Workgroup is now, except that it's still in beta.

And yes, TP use the per-processor licensing model for SQL Server. Remember that its per physical processor, so Xeons and dual-core P4s only count as one processor.

[abrax]

Sorry if my question is dummy, but isn't MSDN only for development etc. purposes and not for commercial use? (and probably not to use it on a public web server?)

[eddy2099]

Well, MSDE can be deployed within the limitations. the reason why it is not for commercial use is because of the governor which restrict number of concurrent connections.

On their website, it reads http://www.microsoft.com/sql/msde/default.asp

Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE 2000) is the free, redistributable version of SQL Server that’s ideal for client applications that require an embedded database, new developers learning how to build data-driven applications, and Web sites serving up to 25 concurrent users.

[abrax]

Thank you for clarifiying this, Eddy!
"Web sites serving up to 25 concurrent users". Hm, wondering if this stands for database users, web users, or concurrent HTTP connections on the web server..?

[spiv]

To clear up a few misconceptions:

MSDE is the same code-base as SQL Server 2000 - internally it is exactly the same code but has the following restrictions:

Size of any database is limited to 2 GB (this limits the usefulness for enterprise applications but is not an issue for most database-driven website apps)

Internal processing is limited to 5 concurrent requests - this is often widely misinterpreted as "limited to 5 connections".  It takes a fairly heavy database load to generate 5 concurrent requests.  Remember, a request takes only milliseconds to process.  If MSDE is hit harder, it simply queues the requests. The end result is that MSDE can handle a much higher database load that most people think.

Enterprise Manager (the Microsoft 'thick client' database management application) is not licensed for use with MSDE.  For database gurus, this can be very annoying, but there are alternatives and if you know SQL scripting, you can "get at" anything you want with a simple web script that sends SQL commands to the database and processes the results.

Two more things -- MSDE is licensed as a free "run-time" tool (and can be bundled by application developers) so it is not subject to per-processor or usage licensing.  All other versions of SQL require per-processor fees in corporate applications and SPLA monthly fees for hosting.

Microsoft itself ships MSDE with Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) so it can run without SQL Server.  WSS is a system for creating completely database-driven websites and it runs surprisingly well with only MSDE, so Microsoft themselves encourages the use of MSDE for production hosting/web sites.  (With WSS, even static web pages are stored as blobs inside MSDE database so every WSS site, even with seldom-changing content, hits the database fairly hard.)

Disclaimer: we use full SQL Server in our own hosting of databases and WSS, but started out with MDSE and never had any problems.