February 26, 2015 at 8:13 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Express Choice
February 27, 2015 at 1:24 am
Hi Steve,
I am actually using two instances of SQL Express in production:
1). An actual production database for a customer-facing internet portal - running on a server
2). An ad-hoc analytical database, where I model day-to-day analytical tasks.
In my experience of managing data for Supply Chain and Sales which is not covered in SAP in a SAP-managed enterprise, performance limitations (1 gig of RAM and 10GB of data) aren't something that will make you or your boss consider a $7k cheque for a Standard edition. There are tools, such as indexed views that can help you deliver fluent ad-hoc reporting even on a large volumes of transactional data.
What made my company invest in buying MS SQL Std is the SSIS.
Best,
Constantine.
February 27, 2015 at 1:39 am
Used express for one very cost sensitive customer for their intranet.
Result: one very happy customer.
February 27, 2015 at 1:54 am
I'm a DB Dev in a very specyfic eniviroment. Our company specializes in building stand alone QA/Process control machinery, that is shipped to customers factories and used there. every machine is supplied with a pc attached to it, application and an instance of SQL Express to gather the results and it's wortking very well. You can still set up reporting services, If customer has a lot of machines and he wants to centralise the data, they can purchase a full version of SQL and use a merge replication or (lately) SSIS to gather the results. I've made a security model for customer to interface with the database directly and generaly i'm very happy with the express edition as it's capable of doing all i need it to do, just need bit more imagination in some cases.
February 27, 2015 at 2:21 am
I totally agree, we have many customers on SQL Express simply because the databases are small and the number users accessing the databases is equally small, and of course it is very cost effective.
February 27, 2015 at 2:44 am
Hi Steve ,
You are right in your editorial but I am feeling that I have to report some points that it is possible you forgot ( coming from my participation to the MSDN/Technet SQL Server forum since its start in 2005 ).
1 - the limit of 10 GB for the size ( to compare with the 2 GB in 2005 at the launch ) must be moderated with the support of the FILESTREAM feature. I recognize that this feature may be tricky in use , especially during the developement of the application in .Net , but , with some précautions , it's feasable easily.
2 - the big problem with SQL Server Express was the specific edition SSMSEE for the SQL Server Management Studio which was developed too quickly and never finished. The result was catastrophic when users tried to upgrade their instances towards the 2008 version as Mike Wachal ( from the SQL Server Express Team ) recognized with only one solution : to uninstall all the Client Tools 2005 ( a real plea )
3 - another plea for SQL Server 2005 was the fact that the 1st access mode proposed during developement with EF was User Instance ( a feature I am detesting because of all problems that it was generating ).
With the replacement of the specific SSMSE edition by the same edition than for the Entreprise Edition this problem disapeared...
Have a nice day and thanks for your "paper" easy to understand ( at least for me as English is not my favorite language )
February 27, 2015 at 2:59 am
We use Express edition for some small bought in applications but the big issue is that it doesn't have sql agent so we have to rely on backupexec for backups and have to run any ssis packages from other servers.
February 27, 2015 at 3:23 am
From a licensing point of view are you allowed to use the SQL express edition in a production environment?
February 27, 2015 at 3:28 am
I agree also on using Express for light weight purposes. Our company sells some software where SQL Server is just a container for configuration and some data. The workload is really low. Currently we require standard edition but we know that Express will work fine also. I am promoting on getting Express supported.
I myself am not clear on how Microsoft supports Express. Does anyone have experience with this?
February 27, 2015 at 3:30 am
It is a great option where suitable. Especially as the upgrade options go all the way up the database scale with little effort. By this I mean that it will be the same flavour of SQL and as a subset of other editions of SQL Server the schema (including SQL code) is supported without change by default.
The physical migration of data is a different matter as well as coordination with other systems if there is a near zero sized downtime allowed. But this surely isn't any worse than for any other migration possibilities e.g. OracleXE to Oracle 11G.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
February 27, 2015 at 5:17 am
If the situation warranted, absolutely. I use Express 2012 at home and I've always been pleasantly surprised at how capable it is.
____________
Just my $0.02 from over here in the cheap seats of the peanut gallery - please adjust for inflation and/or your local currency.
February 27, 2015 at 5:29 am
We often install Express to support our software on client servers--given the pricing of the full version it just makes sense to do so. The lack of an Agent isn't a big issue in terms of backups because you can back up using SQL scripts running from a standard Windows task scheduler job, and we don't use SSIS so no issues there either.
February 27, 2015 at 5:30 am
IMHO, Express Edition is fine for a production environment as long as meets performance and availability SLAs. 4 cores is more than enough for many workloads. The 10GB database size shortens the list of candidate applications but is still sufficient for many. The 1GB RAM limit presents a performance SLA challenge depending on the number of users and database size. The ideal Express candidate is a database size less than 1GB with a few users and low availability requirements.
AlwaysOn is not an option with Express so availability SLAs need to be considered. You might be surprised how many users would relax their availability SLAs if they had to pay all the associated costs for additional hardware and licensing. They might be fine with being down for days while new hardware is ordered, installed, configured, etc. However, some IT shops have an overarching policy that requires HA for all applications. I think that's more to protect the IT staff from unplanned reactive work than the users from outages.
February 27, 2015 at 5:36 am
I agree with Steve in that using express edition may be appropriate to the task at hand. I believe that our job is to solve business problems through automation. I have run into several DBAs and Sys Admins that demand a particular solution to any problem. You know, if you need a hammer a sledge will do.:-D
For example, I was the applications architect on an E-Commerce project for a large insurance company. I needed a server for the purposes of testing the application. I was able to source an IBM and a Dell server for about 1,000 dollars. The Systems Architect would not approve any thing other than an HP DL380 which cost about 4,000 dollars at the time. This kind of thinking is pervasive in large enterprises and is very short sighted.
We need to always consider the actual needs of our customers. If all they need is an Excel spreadsheet for a database give them that instead of a solution that feeds our egos.
February 27, 2015 at 6:12 am
With most of the people here. We have a few instances where I work as backend for small wiki / knowledge base applications. Nice and cheap too 😀
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