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I would like to setup a server that stores prices data for potentially 100,000+ products over time. Updates will be provided once or twice per month.

I would also have many components of such prices. Such that I run out of the 255 fields that Access allows me, and would burst the 2 Gig limit sooner or later. (New fields might just pop up at any moment for some products)

The scale of this project is somehow too small to get database experts to do a full scale database at the moment. Is there any quick fix I can do with the free Microsoft SQL Server ?

Or I am going to run into hardware limitations also?

admdrew
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Michael
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  • very broad, and clearly you do need some expert advice, with some proper scoping; there ere hardware\software and wetwar issues . –  Feb 08 '11 at 03:25

2 Answers2

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You need to be more specific about what you want. If you are using 255 fields, then your table is broken.

But, to answer your question, something like the Express edition(s) of SQL Server will have no problem at all handling 100,000 products (or millions of products, for that matter, assuming your hardware is decent).

Adam Robinson
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  • My hardware is far from decent...I just need a quick reality check here. I can't do this project by running the server off a normal desktop right? – Michael Feb 08 '11 at 05:45
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    No, you can probably run the server from your desktop. My home computer is several years old; I bought it surplus from a local university. It's a dual core, but definitely nothing high-end. I'm running SQL Server Express, Oracle XE, and PostgreSQL for development and testing. I'm the only user, though. Speculation is cheap, but downloads are cheaper. Just download one and try it. – Mike Sherrill 'Cat Recall' Feb 08 '11 at 11:24
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PostgreSQL is an open source dbms that doesn't have size limitations like the free versions of SQL Server and Oracle do. All dbms are naturally constrained by available disk space and available swap space. (But they're not all constrained the same way.) Some free dbms are constrained to use a single CPU; I'm pretty sure SQL Server Express is one of them.

And most dbms have a row size limitation. Depending on the dbms, the row size limitation might be a hard limit (can't create a table that stores more than 'n' bytes per row) or a soft limit ("long" rows--or at least parts of them--are moved to a different part of the database, which affects performance).

You can google "row size limitation", or search SO for the same phrase.

It would be interesting to see the structure and functional dependencies for a table of prices that needed 255 columns.

Mike Sherrill 'Cat Recall'
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  • You are correct; SQL Express is limited to a single CPU and (with the current R2 edition) a maximum database size of 10GB. – Adam Robinson Feb 08 '11 at 04:00