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Dan
Asked: 2012-02-13 13:44:23 +0800 CST

SQL Server 2008 Web edition - access from another IIS?

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We are planning to purchase and install SQL Server 2008 R2 Web edition for our live servers. The grand plan was to install a shiny new server with this SQL Server (web edition), and change the connection strings on our various web-apps on two other servers to point to the new database server.

Looking for answers to another question I stumbled upon this comment (from https://serverfault.com/a/198080/3039):

You can't install SQL Server on it and then use that SQL for other applications/servers.

So, my plan above won't work? I would have to install and run IIS on the same physical SQL Server (web edition)?

sql-server-2008 sql-server-2008-r2

2 Answers

  1. I believe this is correct, the web edition does not offer remote T-SQL endpoints, and thus you would have to either:

    1. Run all your web applications on the same server as the SQL Server is installed on, or

    2. Run a web service on your SQL Server from which all other (remote) web applications query/retrieve data.

    Deploying a "relaying" Data Access layer in a seperate web application like this is probably not a very nice idea from a performance point of view.

    You'll should consider deploying the SQL Server Standard edition to meet the needs that you specify in your question

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  2. Best Answer

    You can run IIS on a physically different server to the SQL Server Web edition. In the end I got a support request in to Microsoft via the reseller that we purchased the software from. They first confirmed it, and we have installed it today and is running ok.

    Once installed, we stepped through this blog post to make sure we had enabled remote connections: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/walzenbach/archive/2010/04/14/how-to-enable-remote-connections-in-sql-server-2008.aspx. In our web-edition, we only had to open the port on the firewall (in the evaluation edition, which is the full enterprise edition, we also had to enable TCP/IP).

    Before we purchased the software, I asked this:

    SQL Server uses "endpoints" to communicate with other applications/services. One of the endpoints is for HTTP access, but Web Edition does not support HTTP/SOAP endpoints! I'm not sure if this means our environment will work or not - there is another endpoint for TCP/IP which to my mind would mean it works, but I don't know if I need an HTTP endpoint or not?

    We basically have 2 front end web-servers which host all our web-pages (most are still using classic-ASP and the Microsoft OLE DB provider to connect) ...

    And received the reply:

    The information Dan shares is correct, and also acknowledges the right way to access the server. It would be through TCP/IP endpoints and http endpoint not being available shouldn't affect the scenario.

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