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Is SQL Express good enough for a small site?

Ben Hayat — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 11:21:23 GMT

Hi;

A site with six users, would SQL Express work properly? What are the limitation of SQL Express compared to the regular version?

Thanks!

RE: Is SQL Express good enough for a small site?

Ben Hayat — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 11:21:23 GMT

Thanks Trent for detail answer;

Basically, the program is going to have a limited amount of data (no imaging). At first we want to run this program in a small and limited environment (while getting all the features in) and then bring in your ES to connect the outside users. We might even be able to get away with SQL Express then, with the way ES shares connections!

Thanks again!

RE: Is SQL Express good enough for a small site?

Trent L. Taylor — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 11:09:36 GMT

It really depends on what you are planning on storing. Here are the limitations of SQL Express.

SQL Express

4GB Database Size Limit
1GB RAM Usage
1 Processor Usage

Unlike MSDE, the limiations are concrete versus not knowing where the limits are. We use SQL Express in 60-70% of our medical installations and only upgrade them to a full version of SQL when they have more data and needs for integrated imaging. Our medical imaging product allows the scanned documents to be stored within the database (integrated) or in a folder based schema. Obviously data-integrated will grow the size of the database VERY quickly, but if they choose to use folder based and security is not as big of a risk in that environment, then they can use the folder based and have only the header record, etc. in the SQL table and the media files store on disk. So you can work your application around the limiations as well. I know of some other teams that will have concrete size limitations on their databases and they use a different database for all of their media. So they will have 2-3 databases on the SQL Express that are used within their application.