Recently I saw asking debating about how to implement a reporting scenario for their company other than log shipping. One suggestion for them was to implement Database Snapshots for reporting, and another was to use replication. The person noted that they only had Standard Edition, so Database Snapshots weren't an option and they would look to implement replication instead.

But is that the best way to approach this requirement?

Moving to Enterprise Edition can cost a company tens of thousands of dollars, but I could easily see someone spending tens of thousands of dollars trying to implement their own version of some feature that is available in Enterprise Edition. Can you imagine the work someone might put into re-building their database to use smaller datatypes or developing their own compression routines for strings to use in Standard Edition?

These examples might seem a little silly, but I would not be surprised if there are people trying to work around the lack of a feature in one edition rather than spending the money for another edition, or even a third party product. And then not questioning the effort being spent on developing this feature, or measuring the cost of that effort. I'm not trying to solve this particular reporting problem, but instead asking you to think about using a different edition if it has a feature you need.

To be fair, most of the people I know working with SQL Server are on a salary, so there isn't a hard cost associated with their effort. If they have the time, management thinks why not spend it building some type of system that works for your company?

It's a hard decision to make with actual costs involved, and I don't have an guidance other than to examine your time, what you could be doing instead of this, and then determine if there is enough of an RIO to justify spending the money on a more expensive edition of SQL Server or a third party product.

If you do, share your experience. There are plenty of other DBAs out there that would like to know how to evaluate their own time and effort.

Steve Jones

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