There are some limitations

4GB database size

only 1 CPU will be used for processing

only 1 GB of RAM will be used for processing

On the upside if your machine exceeds the capabilities you will not be blocked from installing SQL Server Express.

When you go to the download page, there are a couple of different options. One of the things you will want to get in addition to the SQL Server Express server is the SQL Server Management Toolkit. If you have dealt with previous versions of SQL Server and are used to using the SQL Server Manager, you should find this to be similarly helpful.

Here is an alternate link to the download that allows you to download the whole file. Notice at the bottom of the page is a set of related links about other downloads and the first one there is for the SQL Server Management Studio Express. There is also a link there for the .NET redistributable which you will likely need, but I do not think you will need the other links to install SQL Server Express.

In case you are wondering, SQL Server Express runs on my laptop which has 512 MB of RAM and a Pentium M 1.73 GHz processor with Windows XP Pro SP2.

What got me interested. Steve Sanderson recently did a session at our Metroplex Access Developers group about his experience with SQL Server Express and Visual Basic Express highlighting some of the similarities between it and previous versions of MS Access. All in all it was a good session and interesting enough to prompt me to download the software and install it and use it.

In some upcoming posts, I will be describing what I have already found as far as us SQL Server Express 2005 as a backend for MS Access and how it does and does not work.

Check back soon for more info.

PostgreSQL

EnterpriseDB

I have used PostgreSQL in some of my projects and have found it to be very capable. I like the views, stored procedures, triggers and rules in particular.

EnterpriseDB is new to me but this article

Vonage’s Open Source Database Odyssey

Caught my attention. Turns out EnterpriseDB is based on PostgreSQL. You may have heard of MySQL and not heard of PostgreSQL. If so that is a shame. When I initially went looking for a database for Linux some years ago, there seemed to be two main contenders. MySQL and PostgreSQL. MySQL had (and still does have) more attention than PostgreSQL but two things in particular turned me away from it. At the time I started looking the license did not allow for free commercial use. Even more glaring (in my opinion) was the fact that it did not support views (SQL command / concept). I went with PostgreSQL as a result. As I understand it they have fixed some of that but I still find PostgreSQL a bit easier to work with. At any rate, check them out.

始めましょう。