SQL Express

Many people don't realize the full potential of SQL Express. Yes, there are several limitations including the following:

• 1 CPU
• 1 GB RAM
• Limited 64-bit support
• 4 GB max DB size
• No support for the following:
  • Web Services (HTTP Endpoints)
  • Integration Services
  • Notification Services
  • Jobs (though service broker can be used for job-like behavior… thanks Jerry)

BUT, I would say the list of supported items is much more impressive for a free, "lightweight" DB engine:

• Stored Procedures, Triggers, and Views
• T-SQL Enhancements (exception handing, recursive queries, and support for new data types, etc.)
• SQL CLR
• User-defined Types
• Native XML
• XQuery
• Service Broker
• Merge Replication (Subscriber only)
• Transactional Replication (Subscriber only)
• Report Server
• Native Support for Web Services (For reporting services)

To see a complete comparison of the various SQL versions, take a look at Microsoft's SQL Server 2005 Features Comparison.

This is my first post from Word 2007… We'll see how it goes.