SQL Server supports five editions: Enterprise, Standard, Developer, Personal, and Windows CE. A 120-day trial version of Enterprise Edition is available for evaluation purposes, as well as a desktop data engine that can be used for data storage in any custom application. The Developer Edition has the features of the Enterprise Edition, but it is licensed for development and testing only. Personal Edition is designed as an application data store primarily aimed at the mobile computer, and Windows CE devices can use the Windows CE Edition as a local data store. The Enterprise and Standard Editions are designed for the Client/Server environment and differ from each other in their scalability and features. Standard Edition is limited to four processors and 2GB of RAM, whereas Enterprise Edition scales to 32 processors and 64GB of RAM.
In addition, you will see that Analysis Services is a separate install from SQL Server itself. In fact, it can be installed without ever installing SQL Server at all; there are no direct requirements between the two. Analysis Services is covered in great length in Chapter 42, "Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services," and its installation will not be covered here.
Table 8.1 lists each SQL Server edition and its main usage to help you focus on which one to start from. Supported features differ in the areas of the database engine and the Analysis Services features. This will be explained shortly and will clarify your final decision on which is right for your application.
Version | Used For |
---|---|
SQL Server Windows CE Edition | Custom desktop/CE device applications |
SQL Server Personal Edition | Mobile computing usage |
SQL Server Developer Edition | Development and testing only (contains most of EE's features) |
SQL Server Standard Edition | Typical client/server applications (within a department) |
SQL Server Enterprise Edition | Largescale client/server/Web applications across many departments or the enterprise |
Table 8.2 compares the database engine features, and Table 8.3 compares the analysis features.
Database Engine Feature | Enterprise | Standard |
---|---|---|
Multiple-instance support | Supported | Supported |
Fail-over clustering | Supported | N/A |
Fail-over support in SQL Server Enterprise Manager | Supported | N/A |
Log shipping | Supported | N/A |
Parallel DBCC | Supported | N/A |
Parallel CREATE INDEX | Supported | N/A |
Enhanced read-ahead and scan | Supported | N/A |
Indexed views | Supported | N/A |
Federated database server | Supported | N/A |
System Area Network (SAN) support | Supported | N/A |
Graphical DBA and developer utilities and wizards | Supported | Supported |
Graphical utility support for language settings | Supported | N/A |
Full-text search | Supported | Supported |
Analysis Services Feature | Enterprise | Standard |
---|---|---|
Analysis services | Supported | Supported |
User-defined OLAP partitions | Supported | N/A |
Partition Wizard | Supported | N/A |
Linked OLAP cubes | Supported | N/A |
ROLAP dimension support | Supported | N/A |
HTTP Internet support | Supported | N/A |
Custom rollups | Supported | Supported |
Calculated cells | Supported | N/A |
Writeback to dimensions | Supported | N/A |
Very large dimension support | Supported | N/A |
Actions | Supported | Supported |
Real-time OLAP | Supported | N/A |
Distributed partitioned cubes | Supported | N/A |
Data mining | Supported | Supported |