SQL Server Editions

Microsoft Provides different Editions of SQL Server, Which are categorized as below, based on the demands and business requirements.

Core Editions:

1.       Standard Edition – This is for small and medium sized organizations, it will be useful for team development data application. It is integrated with BI and high end features with limited access

2.       Enterprise Edition – It Provides comprehensive features, including OLTP and OLAP, etc., with unlimited access

Specialized Editions:

1.       Workgroup Edition– It will be useful for small organizations like, departmental  or branch office. Easily you can upgrade this version to Standard or Enterprise

2.       Web Edition – This is same as Workgroup, It can serve as front end web server.

3.       Developer Edition – It contains all the functionality of Enterprise edition, but it restricted to use only for testing, development and demo purpose

Free Editions:

1.       Express Edition – Express is a next version MSDE (Microsoft SQL Server Data Engine), it is lightweight and embeddable

2.       Mobile Edition, Compact 3.5 Edition - SQL Server Compact 3.5 is the next version of SQL Server Mobile, adding the desktop platform

Cloud Services:

1. SQL Azure Database – it is a cloud based RDBMS, it helps to deploy relational database solutions to the cloud services.