Hi everyone,

I hope this is the right forum - just a quick question about SQL Express as opposed to SQL Standard/Enterprise - with a few relatively small sites, am I going to notice the difference and does DNN use any of the advanced capabilities? 

I'm trying to choose a new shared hosting package and some have SQL Express, some SQL proper, and I get the impression that especially with a small number of portals/users the performance limitations on Express aren't going to make any difference, can anyone confirm this from experience? I know this depends on the shared server and the amount of websites it already hosts.....but maybe some indication of people who have tried shared hosting with Express would help.

Also, Express limitations include no full-text search - does DNN use this facility to search the site content and if I use Express then will the search module not work? 

Many thanks in advance,

Rob

 SQL Express works fine indeed - keep in mind that you have a limitation on the size (4 Gb if I remember correctly). But with good housekeeping a small-medium sized site should run fine on that. Epress lackx the SQL agent, so jobs should then always be "native" DNN jobs. I know some cases where I preferred using the SQL agent, but on a small site or medium sized business site that shouldn't happen I guess. SQL express also has limitation on the use of resources (e.g. a certain limit on memory usage, only one core at a time etc) - but I'm sure you'll never even feel that unless you start using some heavey DB stuff on your sites.

On the other hand, if you would use shared webhosting, many packages include the use of a SQL server (often with some restrictions on the size of the DB depending on the plan you pay for). If it's for a "localhost" situation, SQL express could indeed make your life free of paying for a SQL standard / enterprise license.

Most DNN developers use SQL express as their localhost test environment DB, by the way.

If you ever hit a problem and want to upgrade, that should always be possible (e.g. Express to Standard). You should even be able to move the database to a different server if needed (e.g. move from your local SQLExpress to a remote SQL server).

A good point here is that most of us actually use SQL Server Express for local sandboxes of our production sites (see numerous tutorials on how to move the data - generally by backup of SQL & restore on local SQL express + FTPing all files + changing connections strings to DB in web.config).