Recently, I was teaching a class to “Upgrade your skills to Microsoft SQL Server 2008”. This course walks through many of the great new features available in the new release. At the end of the three days of hands-on exercises and lecture, I asked the question: “So, what’s your favorite feature?”. One student came back with a very piquant observation: “There’s many features I like, but what concerns me is that they are all Enterprise Edition features…”. I hadn’t thought about it before but he is absolutely right.
I have written about many of the new features of SQL Server 2008 in previous blog entries. Enhancements such as Transparent Database Encryption, Fine grain Auditing, Data Compression, Backup Compression, Resource Governor, Hot Add CPU, and Change Data Capture. All are Enterprise Edition features. Add to that some popular 2005 features that have been improved in 2008 like Peer to Peer Replication, Data Partitioning, and Database Snapshots. All of these are Enterprise Edition features only. So you have to pay for them. Through the teeth. (OK, to be technically correct, the Developer Edition has all of these features for just $50 but you cannot put anything into production according to the EULA).
I have also written about SQL Server licensing in a past blog entry. It seems that Microsoft want to guide us (or push us) to the Enterprise Edition as quickly as possible. At $25,000 per processor licensing it is certainly in their interests. Maybe it’s because they have given us a break with multi-core licensing (you only pay by the socket, not the core). Those quad-core processors are a big plus. Or maybe it’s because they have committed to freezing the license fees in 2008.
On the up side, at least the Declarative Management Framework (DMF), with its policy based management features, is available across the board. So is the Data Collector feature to collect performance metrics. But too many features fall under the Enterprise umbrella and since there is such a big price difference between the Enterprise and Standard Editions ($19K per processor difference) that may deter customers from embracing the new features.
As we all start to tighten our belts on the budget side of things, this may be a factor also of how quickly SQL Server 2008 is adopted. Which is a shame.
Put it this way, I don’t think Joe the Plumber will be upgrading to SQL Server 2008 anytime soon…
Later
Brian
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