Whats the correct way to licence SQL Server [closed] - sql

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I can not understand how Microsoft licensing works.
Here is the system I am trying to cost.
Windows Server 2008 or 2012
SQL Server Standard
ASP.NET MVC 4 App 20 users
SSRS 20 users
SSIS data inports
So do I need 20 Cals for SSRS?
Do I need 20 Cals for the MVC app which is using the SQL Server?
Does SSIS need a Cal?

If you are running a public website using the SQL Server as a backend, you need to use Per Core licensing (or Per Processor licensing prior to SQL Server 2012). With this license, you do not need any CALs.
If you are saying you have an internal web application being used by 20 users, then you have several options and you'll have to figure out which is cheapest (keeping in mind future growth).
You can choose the Per Core licensing as described above and all your licensing needs will be met. Note, you need one license per processor core on your server. You did not specify how many cores your system has. If you have a backup server for fail-over, you will need additional licenses for that as well.
Alternatively, you can choose the Server+CAL model, which is the more confusing approach. First, you'll need a server license. Then, you have to determine how many "users" you have. For this purpose, a "user" is either a specific person (user) or a specific machine (device). You will need one CAL for each "user". If either the machine or the person logged in at the machine has a CAL license, they may use the SQL Server for any purpose, whether it be SSRS, SSIS, a web application, or whatever.
If you have backend systems (servers not being used by a person) that need to connect to the SQL Server to perform automated data imports or any such thing, those systems will need device CALs. If you have a traveling sales-person who needs to use the web app from anywhere, that person will need a user CAL. If you have typical cubicle employees, you can license their machine with a device CAL, or you can license the employee with a user CAL, it's up to you.
Edit:
You'll also need a Windows Server license of course. I think that's obvious, but you never know...

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AWS Website hosting in .NET/SQL - Beginner [closed]

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Little too late for AWS hosting but I guess its never too late :)
I have a .NET MWC based website hosted on a traditional windows server with SQL server. I have about 5000 hits per day and database of roughly 500 gig in size. Monthly traffic is about 50 GB.
I have to migrate this to AWS, what are the steps? I have a simple .NET C# MVC webapp which connects to SQL server. Also, I would like to know how much will it cost to host website with above mentioned requirements on AWS?
Thanks in Advance
Mandy
It will be around $5xx USD per month base on AWS calculator, and $4xx per month for Azure VM + SQL managed Db. If your desire long-term hosting, i will suggest you purchase a proprietary license of SQL server. It will save more!
For reference : One EC2+One SQL Server
You should consider using Amazon Lightsail, which has a single price for the compute (including Data Transfer), and a single price for the Database (including storage). However, Microsoft SQL Server is not available with Lightsail.
The alternative is to launch:
An Amazon EC2 instance for your application
An Amazon RDS database for your SQL Server
The price will vary based upon the size of instance and database you choose. Storage is an extra cost, based on how much you allocate.

Why does sql require a server? [closed]

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I'm new to SQL, and i'm trying to understand something basic about it.
Why do we need a server to connect to when using SQL?
In my very narrow vision of it, it just uses some databases, which could be implemented as arrays for example (or whatever it is that is implemented "backstage").
For example, if I want to set up a table in my computer and do some operations on it, what usage does the server has? Why can't it "just be there"?
I think the reason for your confusion is too narrow interpretation of the word "server" as a separate hardware box.
A server does not need to run on separate hardware, or even in a separate virtual environment. It could be another process on the same computer, or even a library within your process. What makes it a server is an ability to accept and process requests from clients. It does not matter where the server runs physically: as long as you follow a protocol in which requests originate on the client side, you have a server.
What you're envisioning (roughly) is referred to as an in-process database and they do exist for SQL. SQL Server is set up to be used by multiple users or applications so it makes sense for it to be a central server that many clients can connect to so they can share the same data.
If you only want to process data locally, there is SQL Express LocalDB, SQLite and a few others that allow you to essentially embed a SQL engine inside your application.
You are, perhaps, confusing SQL the language with SQL Server, a Microsoft product that implements SQL.
SQL itself has many, many implementations. Many of those implementations do not use a server. MS Access, SQLite, FileMaker are common SQL-using products that rely on file-sharing rather than a client-server setup to provide multi-user access. These products can all also be used on a single machine without sharing files.
There are also implementations of SQL that use CSV files for storage although these are less common.
Finally, many of the client-server SQL products offer related, smaller-scale implementations that do not require a server. These are generally implemented using file-sharing as well.
It depends on what you are needing. Some instances of SQL, such as SQLite3, are local and file based. They have no server. Most provide a server because of the problem they address.
But lets address why a server is needed. Consider a Microsoft Access application where the databases are files shared over a network. Suppose 5 people are working with the same file. They each search for something, and the entire file must be passed over the network. Suppose one edits a record. The next time the others do a search, they will have to load the entire file again. If the file is large this is a huge performance hit. This is why servers were created.
A server receives only the SQL. The server does either a search, or an edit, and returns only the data that has been requested. For any database of reasonable size the performance improvement is huge.
Another benefit of a server is access control. With a server you can have multiple accounts and control what databases and even tables they have access to, and what activities they are allowed to perform.
In short, the server was created to address the problems that arise when you have multiple clients working with a single database.

Need to find username/password that program uses to write to firebird DB [closed]

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I have a program that accesses a local firebird database. It has write access to this database, and we need to be able to write to this database, but do not know the username/password.
Obviously, somewhere in the PC is a connection string/username/password to be able to connect to that database. What methods could I use to find this?
I've tried process monitor to see if it accesses any registry keys but can't see any.
I've checked the installation directories for configuration files.
I've decompiled some of the DAL DLL's but can't see any hardcoding anywhere!
The vendor is no longer, so we can't go to them.
Any advice appreciated!
If with "local" you mean embedded then you actually don't need to know the password - the embedded version doesn't check password. Quote from the "README_embedded.txt" file, chapter "2.3. Authentication and security":
The security database (namely security2.fdb) is not used in the embedded server and hence is not required. Any user is able to attach to any database. Since both the server and the client run in the same address space, the security becomes just an agreement between both sides which can be easily compromised.
So you actually need only the username, and for that you can use SYSDBA - the Firebird's superuser. Note that the username is still checked, even with embedded, to assign user SQL privileges.
In addition to the answer by ain regarding use of embedded, authentication in Firebird is handled by the server and its associated security database. This means that if you copy (or better: backup and restore) a Firebird database to a different server where you know the SYSDBA password, then you can simply access the database.
However if you want continuous write access from a different process to a database that is used by a Firebird server embedded in an user application: you can't. The embedded server (at least on Windows), does not allows external connections.

Working of Login System in Large Applications [closed]

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I am crazy to know that, how login system works in large applications like Facebook, Gmail, youtube, yahoo etc. Once after entering credentials server is responding more quickly. How is that possible ?
There must be more db servers for storing user information. So my question is
How they look for authentication information over more db servers?
Do they look over all the db servers to check for a particular user and if so how it is responding more quickly ?
Do they allocate db server based on geographical location of the user ?
And do they also have more application servers and how these are interconnected with each other.
RDBMS have the functionality to link servers that issue distributed queries, updates, commands, and transactions on heterogeneous data sources.
The database system will use some form of cached information about the user, in SQL Server an execution plan is stored and used when a query is executed. The database management system will decide which execution plan to take in order to generate the fastest results or use a cached data set. Note: Google, Facebook, Amazon etc will lot of server processing power behind the scenes which will make it seem instantaneous. They will also have dedicated teams to manage their databases, perform indexes, tuning, optimization and identify bottlenecks.
The geographical location of the server could be a factor. The closer the server is to the user the faster they can get the information but IMO this would be a matter of nano/milli seconds difference depending on where their data center is located. If the server gets too busy then the load balance will migrate you/other users to a server with more available resources.
Yes. Using more than one web server is needed in scenarios like this and is tied in to part 3 of the question, which server you hit depends on how much available resources the closest server has and if it will accept your connection. They are distributed but the whole process seems transparent to the user, i.e. they think they are using the same server as every other client. They can be interconnected by using session management, Web Services and other interoperability techniques and technologies.

Hiding tables from database users [closed]

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I have a web application using a database in SQL Server 2008. I am the developer of this project and this project has been hosted elsewhere.
I've delivered the project to the administrator. Now the administrator is able to connect to SQL Server but I don't want the administrator to be able to see the database tables.
Is there any way to do this?
I've seen this done before by the makers of ACT. Their product installs a new instance of SQL Server Express and as part of that process they encrypt the sa password for the instance. This makes it 'impossible' for others to connect to the database using anything other than their product and add-on tools.
I don't know exactly how they do it, but perhaps you could search for encrypting sa password or something similar and find out how to do it.
Shy of installing your own instance of SQL Server I am not sure how you would go about this.
Bear in mind that your application will need to then provide the ability to backup, tune, modify, etc the database as the DBA would not have access to the instance of SQL Server.
Incidentally, we threw ACT out once we saw this - I didn't, and still don't, like the idea of a black box running on one of our servers.
In the end, you'll probably find that this added layer of protection (for you, not the client) just isn't worth the aggravation. While you may have proprietary information in the form of the database schema the odds of the client reverse engineering your application and then making their own are slim. Even if they did, it is hard to make good software - they likely wouldn't get it 'right' anyway.
My advice, don't worry about this, focus on making your software great so there is no reason for them to roll their own or look elsewhere.
Simple: No, he is DBA. He can not do his job without the ability to work with the database. Get over your objections.
You cannot limit the rights of an administrator on a server.
The administrator also has access to pretty much all tables that store your encryption keys, so TDE won't work.
If he is a security admin or one of the other roles, that might solve the issue as by default such roles has no permissions on your data.
SQL Administrators normally have these roles to protect your data. They need it.
If the data is very sensitive, you need to use alternative means to secure it, such as applying your own encryption before saving the sensitive values. (AES etc.)