SQL Server 2005 Features Comparison

The tables below present details about each of the different editions.

Scalability and Performance
High Availability
Manageability
Security
Programmability
Integration and Interoperability
Business Intelligence

Learn more by reading What’s New in SQL Server 2005.

Notes: SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition and Evaluation Edition are not listed in the tables. These editions have the same feature set as the Enterprise Edition; the only difference between these editions is the licensing policies.

Scalability and Performance

Feature	Express	Workgroup	Standard	Enterprise	Comments
Number of CPUs	1	2	4	Max OS supported	Includes support for multicore processors.
RAM	1 gigabyte (GB)	3 GB	Operating system maximum	Operating system maximum	Memory limited to maximum supported by operating system.
64-bit Support	Windows on Windows (WOW)	WOW
Database Size	4 GB	No Limit	No Limit	No Limit
Partitioning					Support for large-scale databases
Parallel Index Operations					Parallel processing of indexing operations
Indexed Views					Indexed view creation is supported in all editions. Indexed view matching by the query processor is supported only in Enterprise Edition.

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High Availability

Feature	Standard	Comments
Database Mirroring	¹	Advanced high availability solution that includes fast failover and automatic client redirection
Failover Clustering	²
Backup Log-shipping		Data backup and recovery solution
Online System Changes		Includes Hot Add Memory, dedicated administrative connection, and other online operations
Online Indexing
Online Restore
Fast Recovery		Database available when undo operations begin

¹ Single REDO thread and the safety setting is always on.

² Supports two-node clustering support for the Database server only.

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Manageability

Feature	Express	Workgroup	Comments
Auto Tuning			Automatically tunes database for optimal performance.
Profiler	¹	²
SQL Server Management Studio Express	See Comments		Easy-to-use graphical management tool available as a separate download or included with the SQL Server Express w/Advanced Services download
Management Studio			Full management platform for SQL Server; includes Business Intelligence (BI) Development Studio.
Database Tuning Advisor			Automatically suggests enhancements to your database architecture to improve performance.
Serviceability Enhancements			Dynamic management views and reporting enhancements.
Full-text Search	See comments		Available for SQL Server Express in the SQL Server Express w/ Advanced Services download
SQL Agent Job Scheduling Service

¹ Local and Relational Servers only.

² This edition can be profiled from a Standard or Enterprise Edition of SQL Server 2005.

Security

Feature	Express	Workgroup	Standard	Enterprise	Comments
Advanced Auditing, Authentication, and Authorization
Data Encryption and Key Management					Built-in data encryption for advanced data security.
Integration with Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer					Scans your system to check for common security vulnerabilities.
Integration with Microsoft Update

Programmability

Feature	Express	Comments
Stored Procedures, Triggers, and Views
T-SQL Enhancements		Includes exception handing, recursive queries, and support for new data types.
Common Language Runtime and .NET Integration
User-defined Types		Extend the server with your own custom data types.
Native XML		Includes XML indexing and full-text XML search.
XQuery
Notification Services		Allows the building of advanced subscription and publication applications.
Service Broker	See comments	SQL Server Express can exchange messages with other editions. Messages between instances of SQL Server Express must be routed through another edition.

Integration and Interoperability

Feature	Express	Workgroup	Comments
Import/Export
Integration Services with Basic Transforms			Provides graphical extract, transform, and load (ETL) capabilities.
Integration Services Advanced Transforms			Includes data mining, text mining, and data cleansing.
Merge Replication	¹	²
Transactional Replication	³	⁴
Oracle Replication			Transactional replication with an Oracle database as a publisher
Web Services (HTTP Endpoints)			Support for native Web services, Web Services Description Language (WSDL), and Web authentication

¹ Subscriber only.

² Publish to up to 25 subscribers.

³ Subscriber only.

⁴ Publish to up to five subscribers.

Business Intelligence

Feature	Express	Workgroup	Comments
Report Server	See comments		Report Server is available for SQL Server Express in the SQL Server Express with Advanced Services download.
Report Builder			End-user reporting tool
Reporting Data Sources	¹
Scale Out Report Servers
Data Driven Subscriptions
Infinite Clickthrough
Data Warehousing
Star Query Optimization
SQL Analytical Functions
BI Development Studio	See comments²	³	Integrated development environment for building and debugging data integration, OLAP, data mining, and reporting solutions.
Enterprise Management Tools			Integration with SQL Management Studio, SQL Server Profiler, SQL Server Agent, Backup/Restore.
Native Support for Web Services (Service Oriented Architectures)	⁴	⁵	Allows access to data from any device.
Analysis Services			Powerful analytics and data mining capabilities.
Unified Dimensional Model (UDM)			Enterprise business data model enables fast, interactive, ad hoc analysis of large data sets. Builds smarter reports that leverage centralized business logic and key performance indicators (KPIs), as well as the performance of UDM.
Business Analytics			Multidimensional Expression (MDX) scripts and MDX debugger, .NET stored procedures, Time Intelligence, KPI Framework.
Advanced Business Analytics			Account intelligence, metadata translation, perspective and semi-additive measures.
Proactive Caching			Provides automated caching for greater scalability and performance.
Advanced Data Management			Partitioned cubes, parallel processing, server synchronization.
Full Writeback Support			Dimension and cell writeback
Data Mining			Nine algorithms including decision and regression trees, clustering, logistic and linear regression, neural networks, naive bayes, association, sequence clustering, and time series. Build smarter reports that leverage centralized business logic and KPIs, as well as the performance of UDM.
Advanced Performance Tuning			Additional options for tuning data mining models for the highest accuracy, performance, and scalability.
SQL Server Integration Services Data Flow Integration			Perform data mining prediction and training operations directly in your operational data pipelines.
Text Mining			Convert unstructured text data to structured data for analysis via reporting, online analytical processing (OLAP), or data mining.

¹ Local and Relational Servers only.

² Report Designer only.

³ Report Designer only.

⁴ Reporting Services only.

⁵ Reporting Services only.

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