Understanding the value of the Enterprise Edition with simple examples

This time I just wanted to announce that my colleague Ignacio Alonso Portillo (aka "Nacho") and myself have plans to start posting some simple examples to demonstrate, from a practical standpoint, the huge benefits provided by all the features which are only available with the Enterprise Edition of SQL Server 2005.

Recently, we have been, more and more, hearing SQL Server users saying: "Why would I want to choose the Enterprise Edition in SQL Server 2005? It sounds to me that from previous versions of the product, the only benefit I got from the Enterprise edition, compared to the Standard, was that it was cluster aware, and now in SQL Server 2005, the Standard edition also supports failover clustering, therefore I don't need to "waste" any extra money in buying an Enterprise edition license."

To be honest, that assertion knocks me out. :-P

First of all, it isn't true that failover clustering support was the only difference between Standard and Enterprise editions in previous versions. There was much more than that. But we won't touch the SQL Server 2000 topic nowadays, after over seven years since it was released. That wouldn't be of too much value for you. Instead, we prefer to focus in SQL Server 2005 initially, and will possibly extend it to cover SQL Server 2008 as well.

In 2005, there is so much extra value in the Enterprise Edition, that we prefer to believe that those users who agree with the statement above, is just because they haven't really been explained what all that value is, which form it adopts within the product, and how they can actually benefit from it.

For that reason, we feel it's our obligation to show you all these benefits, using simple and clear examples, with the aim of helping you to take better decisions when it comes to choosing the most appropriate edition of SQL Server to satisfy your business requirements.

So, keep tuned and don't miss any of those deliveries if you want to make the best decisions. ;-)