Comparison of SQL Server 2005 Editions

Microsoft this week announced a new product line for its flagship database and a new pricing structure for its users. For Enterprise Edition customers, the price increase equated to approximately 20% for those who license per processor. Standard Edition customers will see about a 15% price increase once they migrate to SQL Server 2005. This price increase marks the first price increase in more than 5 years.

One of the biggest items to note is the new lower-end options that Microsoft is adding to SQL Server 2005 and retrofitting into SQL Server 2000 soon. The new editions of SQL Server are:

• SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition – The edition of SQL Server for large enterprises that need higher availability and more advanced features in SQL Server and business intelligence. For example, there is no limit on processors or RAM in this edition. Available for an estimated retail price (ERP) of $24,999 ( U.S.) per processor or $13,499 ( U.S. ) per server (25 CALs). Microsoft will also continue to support Developer Edition, that let’s developers develop SQL Server solutions at a much reduced price. That edition has all the features of Enterprise Edition but is licensed for development purposes only.
• SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition – This edition of SQL Server has a lot more value in this 2005. For example, you can now create a highly-available system in Standard Edition by using clustering, database mirroring and integrated 64 bit support. These features were only available in Enterprise Edition in SQL Server 2000 and caused many enterprises to purchase Enterprise Edition when Standard Edition was probably sufficient for them. Like Enterprise Edition in SQL Server 2005, it also offers unlimited RAM! So, you can scale it as high as your physical hardware and OS will allow. There is a cap of 4 processors though. Available for an ERP of $5,999 ( U.S.) per processor or $2,799 ( U.S. ) per server (10 CALs).
• SQL Server 2000 and 2005 Workgroup Editions – This edition is meant for small and medium businesses that need a database server with no business intelligence or Reporting Services. Available for an ERP of $3,899 ( U.S.) per processor or $739 ( U.S. ) per server (five CALs), Workgroup Edition supports up to two processors, unlimited database size. In SQL Server 2000 Workgroup Edition, the limit is 2GB of RAM.  In SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition, it raises to 3 GB.
• SQL Server 2005 Express Edition – This edition is the equivalent of Desktop Edition (MSDE) in SQL Server 2000 but with a lot more enhancements. For example, MSDE never offered any time of management tool and that is included in 2005. Also included is the Import/Export Wizard and a series of other enhancements. This remains to be a free addition of SQL Server for small applications. It has a limit of 4 GB databases. Most importantly is that the query governor has been removed from this edition allowing for more people to query the instance at the same time.

As you can see the prices have increased but value has been added to each release. For example, now that SQL Server Standard Edition can be clustered and have more RAM, you can utilize it instead of going to Enterprise Edition. Many of the highly touted features of SQL Server 2005 will only be available in Enterprise Edition though. The most disappointing one for BI workers will be the Report Writer, which allows users to create their own ad-hoc reports against your DBMS and will only be available in Enterprise Edition.

Bottom line though is that users that just need a database will find SQL Server much less expensive by using Workgroup Edition in SQL Server 2005. Those users who want high availability can now get it in Standard Edition, lowering their overall price. Enterprise Edition customers though will find a larger price increase, but with a lot more value that SQL Server 2005 brings. So, what do you think? Click Your Opinion at the bottom of this article to comment.

Here’s a summary of the SQL Server 2005 features (from Microsoft’s site) that are available in the new release by edition:

Feature	Express	Workgroup	Standard	Enterprise	Comments
Scalability and Performance
Number of CPUs	1	2	4	No Limit	Includes support for multicore processors
RAM	1 GB	3 GB	No Limit	No Limit
64-bit Support	Windows on Windows (WOW)	WOW
Database Size	4 GB	No Limit	No Limit	No Limit
Partitioning					Support for large-scale databases
Parallel Index Operations					Parallel processing of indexing operations
High Availability
Database Mirroring			1		Advanced high availability solution that includes fast failover and automatic client redirection
Failover Clustering			2
Backup Log-shipping					Data backup and recovery solution
Online System Changes					Includes Hot Add Memory, dedicated administrative connection and other online operations
Online Indexing
Online Page and File Restore
Fast Redo					Database available when undo operations begin
Manageability
Auto Tuning					Automatically tunes database for optimal performance
Express Manager					Simple Management Tool
Management Studio					Full management platform for SQL Server; includes Business Intelligence (BI) Development Studio
Database Tuning Advisor					Automatically suggests enhancements to your database architecture to improve performance
Serviceability Enhancements					Dynamic management views and reporting enhancements
Full Text Search
Security
Advanced Auditing, Authentication, and Authorization
Data Encryption and Key Management					Built-in data encryption for advanced data security
Common Criteria Certification					Certification planned to be completed after release to manufacturing
Best Practices Analyzer					Scans your system to make sure you are following recommended best practices
Integration with Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer					Scans your system to check for common security vulnerabilities
Integration with Microsoft Update
Programmability
Stored Procedures, Triggers, and Views
T-SQL Enhancements					Includes exception handing, recursive queries, and support for new datatypes
Common Language Runtime and .NET Integration
User-defined Types					Extend the server with your own custom datatypes
Native XML					Includes XML indexing and full-text XML search
XQuery
Notification Services					Allows the building of advanced subscription and publication applications
Service Broker	3	3
Integration and Interoperability
Import/Export
Integration Services with Basic Transforms					Provides graphical extract, transform, and load (ETL) capabilities
Integration Services Advanced Transforms					Includes data mining, text mining, and data cleansing
Merge Replication	3	4
Transactional Replication	3	5
Oracle Replication					Transactional replication with an Oracle database as a publisher
Web Services (HTTP Endpoints)					Support for native Web services, WSDL, and Web authentication
Business Intelligence (BI)
Data Warehousing
BI Development Studio					Integrated development environment for building and debugging data integration, OLAP, data mining, and reporting solutions
Analysis Services (OLAP Engine)					Includes advanced OLAP capabilities including KPIs
Partitioned Cubes
Proactive Caching					Provides automated caching for greater scalability and performance
Advanced Measures and Dimensions
Custom Rollups
Parallel Data Modeling
Data Mining—Standard Algorithms					Includes decision trees and clustering
Data Mining—Advanced Algorithms					Five additional algorithms including neural networks, naïve bayes, time series, association and sequence clustering
Reporting Controls and Wizard					Both Windows and Web-based report controls are delivered with Visual Studio 2005
Reporting Engine
Data-Driven Subscriptions					Supports large-scale, customized report delivery
Scale-out Web Farms
Infinite Drilldown
Report Builder					New end user ad-hoc query and reporting client

¹ Supports only two CPUs per server
² Supports only two nodes
³ Subscriber only
⁴ Publish to up to 25 subscribers
⁵ Publish to up to five subscribers