Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2023 November 5

= November 5 =

Microsoft SQL Server
I need to purchase a new piece of software - Microsoft SQL Server. I am thinking about Standard for $620. I do have an SQL Server now, I installed it many years ago from a MS website for "free." Sort of. I had the right to do so because I bought a "training" program from MS. It cost over a thousand dollars. I made a full use of it over the years. This program had a name which I forgot. It had time limit - 1 year and could be used for training only. I could download any MS software if I was a member of that "club." No commercial uses. After a few years I stopped paying for renewal. I called MS and asked if I still could use SQL. They said OK. I built a wonderful database on it with the help of Visual Studio. I still use it every day.

Recently I bought a more powerful Dell computer and I want to install a new SQL Server in it. I cannot use the one I have, because with the new computer my work might evolve in the direction of commercial usage. I checked what MS offers and got confused. There are so many variants!. I think about using it on a website which is in development. I will be the only user, but visitors could pull data from the SQL Server. Is it still the situation with One user?

I am sure there are experts out there, who know what MS offers better. I would appreciate a brief consultation. Thanks, - AboutFace 22 (talk) 20:41, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
 * are you tied to Microsoft SQL? There are a lot of alternatives. MySQL is open source (small note: MySQL was bought by Oracle and the version of the original developer is now MariaDB). Both might be cheaper than getting a Microsoft SQL license. Rmvandijk (talk) 10:20, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Be careful if you want to store times in MySQL/MariaDB. --Error (talk) 10:32, 10 November 2023 (UTC)