SQL Server Edition wise Feature Comparison

Often we need to figure out what specific feature (or database technology) is supported in which edition of SQL Server. Fortunately a very good chart is available at http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/editions-compare.aspx to answer any question related to this topic.

However below table represent some important extract which can be very handy:                                        




Feature
Core Editions
Specialized Editions
Enterprise (Developer edition has same features)
Standard
Workgroup
Web
Express
Number of CPUs
8 CPU
4 CPU
2 CPU
4 CPU
(Web Workloads Only)
1
CPU
Memory Utilization
2 TB Ram
64 GB Ram
4 GB Ram
OS Maximum
1
GB Ram
Database Size
524PB
524PB
524PB
524PB
10
GB
x32 Hardware Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
x64 Hardware Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Data Compression
Yes




Resource Governor
Yes




IA64 hardware support
Yes




Table and Index Partitioning
Yes




Parallel Index Operations
Yes




Parallel Consistency Checks (DBCC)
Yes




Scalable Shared Databases
Yes




Indexed views
Yes




Enhanced Read-ahead and Scan
Yes




Database Mirroring
Yes (full)
Yes (Single Threaded, Safety Full Only)
Witness only
Witness only
Witness
only
Log Shipping
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Clustering
16-node failover clustering
2-node failover clustering



Automatic Corruption Recovery from Mirror
Yes
Yes



Log Stream Compression
Yes
Yes



Online Indexing
Yes




Resource Governor
Yes




Backup Compression
Yes
Yes (2008 R2 onwards)



Hot-add Memory and CPU Support
Yes




Database Snapshots
Yes




Fast Recovery
Yes




Online Page and File Restore
Yes




SQL Server Change Tracking
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Merge Replication
Yes
Yes
Subscriber only 
Subscriber only 
Subscriber only 
Transactional Replication
Yes
Yes
Subscriber only 
Subscriber only 
Subscriber only 
Snapshot Replication
Yes
Yes
Subscriber only 
Subscriber only 
Subscriber only 
Heterogeneous Subscribers
Yes
Yes



Oracle Publishing
Yes




SQL Server Change Tracking
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
C2 Complaint Tracing
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
SQL Audit
Yes




Transparent Database Encryption
Yes




Extensible Key Management
Yes




Hypervisor Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Database Migration Tools
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Policy-Based Management
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Database Mail
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Performance Data Collection
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

SQL Server Agent
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Database Tuning Advisor
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Plan Guides
Yes
Yes

Yes

SQL Profiler
Yes
Yes
Yes


Standard Performance Reports
Yes
Yes



Distributed Partition Views
Yes




Parallel Index Operations
Yes




Automatic Query-to-index-View Matching
Yes




Unlimited Virtualization
Yes




Data Compression
Yes




Change Data Capture (CDC)
Yes









Please visit at http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/editions-compare.aspx for more details. Also please note that developer edition has same features of enterprise but it must be used only for development purpose. 



NB. This chart is focused on SQL Server 2008.

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