SQL Server editions

- [Instructor] Microsoft SQL Server 2016 is available in several different editions. Those editions are Enterprise, Standard, Web, Express, and Developer. For this course, I'll be using Enterprise Edition. However, the majority of features we're covering would also be available in Standard, or some of the other editions. Enterprise has the most features. Standard has a subset of features, but it's still appropriate for many business applications. The Web Edition, as the name implies, is the specialized edition for web servers.

The Express Edition is a free edition designed for hobbyists. It has an extremely limited feature set. The Developer Edition actually has every feature that Enterprise Edition has. It has a much lower price point. Microsoft usually prices this at $100 or less. And it's designed for people learning SQL Serever 2016. It has a license agreement that says you will not put it into production or actually use it on a production network. As mentioned, Enterprise Edition has every possible feature SQL Server could have.

SQL Server Enterprise Edition does not put any limitation on how many processors you can use. That would only be limited by your operating system. And the same with memory. SQL Server Enterprise Edition can potentially use all of the memory in your server, however high you operating system can go. Standard Edition has some limitations. The database engine is limited. Specifically, it does not support partitioning, does not support compression, and does not support in-memory tables. There's a few other features that are not supported, but I feel that these are the most important ones.

Standard Edition also has some limitations on the Business Intelligence features. The hardware limitations for Standard Edition. You're limited to 24 processor cores. The database engine is limited to 128GB of memory, and the Business Intelligence features are limited to using only 64GB of memory. If you would like more information about the specifics of the different versions, Microsoft has some very thorough documentation. The web page is called Features Supported by Editions of SQL Server 2016.

You could search for that in your favorite search engine. It's currently available at this URL.