Sage 200 & SQL Express

[freedomit]

I'm putting together a new server quote for a customer and they have 5 users using Sage 200 (currently 2011 about to upgrade to newest version). I don't have that much experience with Sage 200 but I know it requires SQL, they question is would SQL Express be ok for 5 users or do they need the standard package which is very expensive?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

How large do you think their database is? Express versions of SQL can stuff only 1 gig of data into memory. So when databases get larger than that, since it can stuff only 1 gig in RAM, the rest will be paged on the hard drive...which is slow. The database size is 10 gigs (for SQL Express 2012). 4 gigs for SE 2008.

So it usually comes down to a performance limitation.....if they're smaller, they can likely start out with SQL Express. Once they start having issues with performance, move them to full blown SQL.

May want to take a look at their current database...and talk with Sage support about it, they can look at it and give honest opinions. Run some database maint utilities on it too, shrink it down, can probably prevent needing to go to full SQL for quite a while.

 

[freedomit]

How large do you think their database is? Express versions of SQL can stuff only 1 gig of data into memory. So when databases get larger than that, since it can stuff only 1 gig in RAM, the rest will be paged on the hard drive...which is slow. The database size is 10 gigs (for SQL Express 2012). 4 gigs for SE 2008.

So it usually comes down to a performance limitation.....if they're smaller, they can likely start out with SQL Express. Once they start having issues with performance, move them to full blown SQL.

May want to take a look at their current database...and talk with Sage support about it, they can look at it and give honest opinions. Run some database maint utilities on it too, shrink it down, can probably prevent needing to go to full SQL for quite a while.

Thanks for the reply

There were several databases which was a little confusing, it looked like one for each financial year and then a main one, is that normal? They ranged from 200Mb to 1Gb in size. The databases will be on a raid 10 made with 6 10k SAS drives and a 2Gb cache.

They currently use a copy of full SQL but its unlicensed (you may remember my previous topic about a licence audit) and I'm migrating them to a new server. I will contact Sage support and see what they say, maybe start with express and move to standard of performance drops.