The Corporate Edition of Quotewerks includes all the features of the Standard
and the Professional Editions and adds support for Microsoft® SQL 7.0 or
2000 backend database. Corporate Edition pricing does not include Microsoft
SQL licensing.
Why Purchase QuoteWerks Corporate Edition
Scaleability
MS SQL an be deployed to and used by virtually an unlimited number of concurrent
users. Furthermore, it has the ability to handle terabyte levels of data. MS
Access is limited to 255 users and 2 gigabytes of data. Using the Access backend
included with the Standard and Professional Edition, we recommend that no more
than 25 users be running the same networked copy concurrently. The Corporate
Edition using the MS SQL backend however can support virtually unlimited number
of concurrent users.
Performance
MS SQL has a performance advantage over Access for large sets of data and many
concurrent users. Because Access is a file-server system, the query processing
must happen on the client. This involves moving a lot of data over the network
for large databases. MS SQL runs that same query on the server. This puts a
larger load on the server, but can reduce network traffic substantially, especially
if the users are selecting a small subset of the data. MS SQL improves your
network performance and increases the number of users you can have. This is
especially important if your network connection speed is low.
Stability
Utilizing an MS SQL backend will minimize your down time. It allows data to
be backed up while the database remains online and accessed by users. Furthermore,
the big advantage that MS SQL has over Access is that MS SQL is a process that
runs queries and logs transactions. If anything should go wrong while writing
to the database, such as a disk error, network failure, or power failure, MS
SQL can recover because it logs transactions. After the system comes back up,
MS SQL will revert back to the last consistent state. If the system were to
go down with Access, the database would be corrupt and you may need to revert
back to your last backup copy. This gives MS SQL greater reliability than Access.
Security
Utilizing an MS SQL backend provides a full suite of security features that
include: powerful and flexible role-based security for server,database, and
application profiles; integrated tools for security auditing; and support for
sophisticated file and network encryption, including Secure Socket Layer (SSL).
SQL Server 2000 has been certified under the US governments C2-level security
certification-- the highest level of security available in the industry.
Requirements
Clearly, implementing the SQL Server backend has numerous benefits. It is important
to note that it also has requirements. First, you will need to have or purchase
Microsoft SQL Server licenses. Secondly, you will have the resources available
to setup and maintain Microsoft SQL Server. Furthermore, you will need to have
or purchase appropriate hardware recommended by Microsoft or MS SQL Server.
