All SQL Server 2000 versions (as well as several other Microsoft
products; see KB #324998) ship with SQL Server 2000 Desktop
Edition, often referred to as MSDE (Microsoft Data Engine) 2.0.
Essentially, MSDE is a version of SQL Server that you can
distribute with applications. As such, it is slightly lighter
weight, and has some notable restrictions. Other than the following
list, however, MSDE and the other editions of SQL Server have very
similar behavior and performance characteristics (see Article #2345
for a technical comparison).
- an MSDE database can be no larger than 2 GB (this includes MDF
and NDF files only log sizes are not included in the size
limit);
- performance throttling occurs when there are more than five (5)
concurrent workload batches in progress (this does *not* mean 5
concurrent *users* with a properly build application, you can
certainly support more. For more detailed information about the
query governor, see this MSDN topic);
- MSDE cannot be a publisher in transaction replication, and when
acting as publisher in all other types of replication, must also be
the distributor;
- MSDE does not ship with GUI administrative tools such as
Enterprise Manager or Query Analyzer -- see Article #2442 for
alternative administration tools;
- MSDE does not support SQL Mail (see Article #2403 for
alternatives);
- MSDE does not offer OLAP / data warehousing capabilities;
and,
- MSDE does not come with Books Online, but you can download it
from Microsoft downloads (updated January, 2004).
The licensing issues surrounding MSDE have long needed to be
clarifiedperhaps
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/msde/howtobuy/msdeuse.asp
is a good start.
There are also some other minor differences in MSDE that you should
be aware of... this article goes into detail about them, and this
product matrix might be useful as well.
You can also look at this WebCast in KB #817788, which details
issues surrounding installing, deploying, and maintaining MSDE.
And for a verbose commentary on MSDE, see SoftwareEng's WiKi.
SQL Server Express 2005
As of July 2004, these are the planned limitations of the next
generation of MSDE, now known as SQL Server Express (which will
still be a free product):
- 1 GB memory (for buffer, not total);
- 1 CPU;
- 50 named instances per machine;
- 4 GB per database (not including log files);
- transactional replication is limited to a subscriber role
only;
- data mirroring and clustering are not available;
- full-text search is not available;
- SQL Agent is not available (you can use Service Broker or Task
Scheduler instead);
- the DTS Runtime is not available (though you can use DTS in
Express from other machines);
- Reporting Services is not available; and,
- Business Intelligence is not available (this includes
Notification Services and Analysis Services).
There is no more workload governor, though if you are running
Express on Windows XP
Home or Windows 2000/XP Professional, and
using named pipes to connect, you are limited to 5 and 10
simultaneous connections, respectively. This is enforced at the OS
level, and is not a new limitation in SQL Server Express; it also
exists in previous versions of MSDE and SQL Server Personal
Edition.
There will be a limited graphical management tool for SQL Express,
however it will not ship until as late as mid-2006. In the
meantime, you can access SQL Server Express through SQLCMD, the new
command-line admin interface to SQL Server; with Management Studio
from any other SQL Server edition; or, from a subset of the
applications listed in Article #2442.
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