How far does SQL Server Express Edition scale?

Question

Wikipedia says SQL Server Express Edition is limited to "one processor, 1 GB memory and 4 GB database files". Does anyone have practical experience with how well this scales?

Answer 1

It's a regular sql server, it just has a limit. SharePoint by default uses the sql server express if that gives you any idea. We have our entire office (80+) people running on that instance.

Answer 2

We have used SQL Server Express Edition in some of our smaller applications, maybe 5+ users, and smaller databases. The 4GB is very limiting in a high transaction environments, and in some cases we have had to migrate our customer to SQL Server Standard Edition.

Answer 3

It really comes down to the nature of your database and application. What kind of application(s) are hitting SQL Server? In my experience, it only handles 5-10 users with a heavy read/write application.

Answer 4

This question is far too vague to be useful to you or anyone else. Also, Wikipedia is your primary source of info on SQL Server, fail?

The first matrix of the MSDN page for Features Supported by the Editions of SQL Server 2008 is titled "Scalability." The only edition with any features marked "Yes" is Enterprise (you get Partitioning, Data compression, Resource governor, and Partition table parallelism.) And it goes down the line from there, Express does not support many of the features designed for "scale." If your main demand is space, how soon will you exceed 4GB? If your main demand is high availability and integrity, don't even bother with Express.

"Scalable" is quickly becoming a weasel-/buzz-word, alongside "robust." People use it when they haven't thought hard enough about what they mean.