DMAXX News

Version 2.2.1 and its subsequent service packs is the last version of TheBooks which will support Windows 2000 and SQL Server 2000. Subsequent versions of TheBooks will not install into environments with either of these platforms.

Windows 2000 entered the 5-year extended support phase on June 30, 2005. During this phase, Microsoft continues to provide security hot fixes and paid support but no longer provides complimentary support options, design change requests, and non-security hotfixes

SQL Server 2005 SP1 has been available since mid April 2006 and SQL Server 2008’s release is comming in the next few months. SQL Server 2005 is a significant upgrade from SQL Server 2000 and includes many functional as well as performance enhancements. TheBooks has been supported on SQL Server 2005 since its initial release in November 2005.

At this time, more than eighty percent of our customers have migrated to SQL Server 2005 and are performing their daily operations without any issues.

There are several options available for SQL Server 2005:

• SQLExpress is a free version that is appropriate for any organization whose database is under 4 Gbytes and does not required multi-processor support and does not required more than one Gbyte of memory to be reserved to SQL Server.
• SQL Server Workgroup is licensed version that is appropriate for any organization whose databases are of any size, requires at most dual cpu support and does not required more than three Gbytes of memory to be reserved to SQL Server. The standard pricing for this version is $3900 per processor.
• SQL Server Standard is licensed version that is appropriate for any organization whose databases are of any size, requires at most quad cpu support and has no limit on the memory reserved to SQL Server. This version also supports clusters. The standard pricing for this version is $6000 per processor.
• SQL Server Enterprise is licensed version that has no restrictions. This version also supports clusters. The standard pricing for this version is $25,000 per processor.
• A good article describing the differences between the various versions is available at http://redmondmag.com/features/article.asp?EditorialsID=576 Note, that with very few exceptions, customers running TheBooks will meet the requirements of SQLExpress or SQL Server Workgroup.

From a migration standpoint, SQL Server 2000 and 2005 can co-exist on the same computer so applications can be migrated to the new database over time.