Choosing DB Edition (Std vs Ent)

[Jonas Hei]

I need to decided between Standard and Enterprise Edition (Cost is a
criteria - but its secondary to performance - <!--and I am not paying for
it myself-->)

The server spec under consideration: Dual Xeon, 1GB RAM, 36GB - RAID 1
(Dell PowerEdge 1850).

Application: Windows 2003 Std Server, ASP.NET, MS SQL Server 2000 based
data driven web application.

Approximately 25 simultaneous clients. Peak activity would probably be 50
transactions/activities per second (2 per second per client). I expect
the database size to grow up to 4GB in 1 year.

The application would use only basic OLAP features (if at all)...so
feature set wise I believe that standard edition is good enough.

What I am concerned about is when MS documentation says that Standard
Edition is for "organization that do not require the advanced scalability,
availability, performance, or analysis features of the SQL Server 2000
Enterprise Edition"

Is there a difference in performance between Std and Ent editions? In
terms of number of transactions per second that can be serviced?

What other criteria should I be aware of before deciding to go one way or
the other?

Any ideas?

[Stephen Dybing [MSFT]]

"Jonas Hei" <ma******@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:opsehfbjyzr0m89z@fx1025...

I need to decided between Standard and Enterprise Edition (Cost is a
criteria - but its secondary to performance - <!--and I am not paying for
it myself-->)

The server spec under consideration: Dual Xeon, 1GB RAM, 36GB - RAID 1
(Dell PowerEdge 1850).

Application: Windows 2003 Std Server, ASP.NET, MS SQL Server 2000 based
data driven web application.

Approximately 25 simultaneous clients. Peak activity would probably be 50
transactions/activities per second (2 per second per client). I expect
the database size to grow up to 4GB in 1 year.

The application would use only basic OLAP features (if at all)...so
feature set wise I believe that standard edition is good enough.

What I am concerned about is when MS documentation says that Standard
Edition is for "organization that do not require the advanced scalability,
availability, performance, or analysis features of the SQL Server 2000
Enterprise Edition"

Is there a difference in performance between Std and Ent editions? In
terms of number of transactions per second that can be serviced?

What other criteria should I be aware of before deciding to go one way or
the other?

Any ideas?

I'd guess that we're referring to features in the section you quoted even
though it makes it sound like the Enterprise Edition is inherently faster
than the Standard Edition. That's simply not the case. For example,
Clustering is a high availability option that is only available in the
Enterprise Edition. You can get more information about features by Edition
and choosing a particular Edition here:
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/evaluat...s/choosing.asp.

There is nothing in either the Standard or Enterprise Edition engine that
I'm aware of that throttles performance based on the Edition that you're
using. The only Edition that has a performance throttle based on the Edition
is MSDE.

If the Standard Edition contains the features your application needs, my
guess is that it will run it just fine. Of course, without testing that's
impossible to know for sure.

--
Sincerely,
Stephen Dybing

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

[John Bell]

Hi

The engine is the same for both editions, the Enterprise edition has
additional features, such as failover clustering, built in log shipping and
automatic use of indexed views.

See
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...ar_ts_1cdv.asp

If you don't want to use these features or if you are happy to "manually"
implement the features or can provide your own solutions, then standard
edition should be ok. All editions should be supported on your hardware.

John

"Jonas Hei" <ma******@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:opsehfbjyzr0m89z@fx1025...

I need to decided between Standard and Enterprise Edition (Cost is a
criteria - but its secondary to performance - <!--and I am not paying for
it myself-->)

The server spec under consideration: Dual Xeon, 1GB RAM, 36GB - RAID 1
(Dell PowerEdge 1850).

Application: Windows 2003 Std Server, ASP.NET, MS SQL Server 2000 based
data driven web application.

Approximately 25 simultaneous clients. Peak activity would probably be 50
transactions/activities per second (2 per second per client). I expect
the database size to grow up to 4GB in 1 year.

The application would use only basic OLAP features (if at all)...so
feature set wise I believe that standard edition is good enough.

What I am concerned about is when MS documentation says that Standard
Edition is for "organization that do not require the advanced scalability,
availability, performance, or analysis features of the SQL Server 2000
Enterprise Edition"

Is there a difference in performance between Std and Ent editions? In
terms of number of transactions per second that can be serviced?

What other criteria should I be aware of before deciding to go one way or
the other?

Any ideas?

[Erland Sommarskog]

Stephen Dybing [MSFT] (st****@online.microsoft.com) writes:

There is nothing in either the Standard or Enterprise Edition engine
that I'm aware of that throttles performance based on the Edition that
you're using. The only Edition that has a performance throttle based on
the Edition is MSDE.

There are however features in Enterprise Edition that may help to
improve performance. One such features in indexed views. You can use
indexed views in Std Edition too, but there situations where the optimizer
will not consider the view.

Then again, if you are not using indexed views, this will not make a
difference.
--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, es****@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinf...2000/books.asp

[Stephen Dybing [MSFT]]

True, but in my defense, it's listed on the Features page I pointed
everybody at. :-)

--
Sincerely,
Stephen Dybing

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

"Erland Sommarskog" <es****@sommarskog.se> wrote in message
news:Xn*********************@127.0.0.1...

Stephen Dybing [MSFT] (st****@online.microsoft.com) writes:

There is nothing in either the Standard or Enterprise Edition engine
that I'm aware of that throttles performance based on the Edition that
you're using. The only Edition that has a performance throttle based on
the Edition is MSDE.

There are however features in Enterprise Edition that may help to
improve performance. One such features in indexed views. You can use
indexed views in Std Edition too, but there situations where the optimizer
will not consider the view.

Then again, if you are not using indexed views, this will not make a
difference.
--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, es****@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinf...2000/books.asp