SQL Server Express as a Jet replacement

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SQL Server Express as a Jet replacement

Bob Cresswell

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June 7, 2007 at 3:08 am

#196270

A little bit of background may be useful..

For the last few months I have been working with some database systems written in Access by a non-IT professional using a Jet backend. The databases were originally written when there were 4-5 users. There are now up to 50 users, most of which are frequently updating the database (i.e. there jobs are to process correspondence or make telephone calls and record the results in the database).

Apart from some rather 'interesting' design ideas implemented by the original designer, Jet amazingly works most of the time but on occasions database corruptions do occur. There are also some locking issues form time to time. There is also quite a high housekeeping requirement to keep the database below the 1Gb limit.

The Jet backend databases are sitting on a Windows NT Server which also serves other application data. Some while back, they did try to upgrade to Server 2003 but having bought the SBS version found it insisted on being the PDC, did not have the time to plan a full migration, didn't like the costs of the additional licences, so have installed 2000 Server instead but only with 5 user licences.

Now the question...

Among other things (including replacing the NT Server), I have suggested that they should move to a SQL Server based back-end but this was not viewed favourably on the basis of software cost.

So, could we use SQL Server 2005 Express as a Jet replacement?

Where would be the best place to put it? Not the NT Server, obviously but I guess we could ramp up the licence count on the Server 2000 PC (or preferable but the appropriate Server 2003 software) and put it there.

Would it be happy on a dedicated shared Windows xp PC (maybe spec'd up)?

Are there likely to be any issues with the anticipated user count (stable at around 50 concurrent users)?

It may be that we would implement some of the features of SQL Server in the future but at the moment I am just contemplating re-creating tables and populating them with the existing data (redundant fields and all!!).

TIA