Which MSDE or other product do I need?

[jasperx]

I have a fully licensed version of Visual Studio 6 Enterprise Ed. which I happily use to build asp applications with Access and SQL Server which are then deployed at an ISP..the version of SQL Server version I use is something called MSDE and shows a version number for SQL of 7.

A while back our ISP barred us from connecting to our SQL database using the MSDE tool... some issue about performance and maybe even some gobbledy gook about licenses so we have managed to live with making modifications to the DB with scripts on asp pages...kind of clunky but the price is right.

Here is my question... which of the dozen or more different products offered by Microsoft is the one that would provide a development environment on my desktop and would also allow me to manage the ISP hosted DB from Enterprise Manager? By manage, I mean things like setting up a DTS package, adding fields and tables, editing data etc... backups are not really an issue. I see products listed from $149 to over $10K...and it is not at all clear which product is the one needed.

 

[mrdenny]

First off, if your ISP is blocking access to the MSDE database from Visual Studio 6 then you will not be able to connect to it via Enterprise Manager either.

If they are telling you that there is a license problem with you connecting to the MSDE instance with your Visual Studio 6, then they are full of it. MSDE doesn't require a seperate license to connect to it.

In order to get Enterprise Manager you would need to purchase a copy of SQL 2000 Server. You could probally get away with only purchasing the developer edition of SQL 2000, which is less expensive. The Enterprise Manager is not sold as a stand alone product.

They are probally blocking access to your database for security reasons. There is an open source web based version of Enterprise Manager that a few guys wrote. You can get more info on it, and download it from

http://sourceforge.net/projects/asp-ent-man/.

It works pretty well. We use it for our hosting customers to work with thier databases. It hasn't been updated in a while, but they do support it.

You just need your web hosting company to support .net on the web server.

Denny

 

[jasperx]

I am doing a pretty bad job of describing the problem... here is another go at it.
We use MSDE to develope... the application is hosted on a full blown SQL Server at an ISP. Our ISP does not want us connecting remotely with our Enterprise Manger (included with MSDE). The reason we have been given are confusing to us but mostly sounded like they wanted us using a more recent version of the tools... 2000 vrs. 7. And they did make some noise about licenseing. We are not actually blocked... we can connect but we have been told that if they find out they will fire us as customers.

When I started looking at more recent versions I found MSDN memberships that cost thousands of $ per year and tons of other SQL license options... I looked up developer edition of 2000 and it looks great for $49. I will ask my ISP if this will work for them.

What we need to do is be able to deploy a DTS package and use it by coming in through Enterprise Manager.

 

[mrdenny]

OK, now I'm confused. MSDE doesn't come with Enterprise Manager. It only comes with the command line tools (osql, etc).

If you have SQL Enterprise Manager v7 you shouldn't be able to connect to a SQL 2000 database.

If there SQL Server is licensed per processor which it needs to be because it is being connected to by web site(s). It sounds like they don't quite understand how the licensing works for SQL.

Denny