MSDE stands for Microsoft Data Engine or Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine. It is a toned down version of Microsoft SQL Server which is free for non-commercial use as well as certain limited commercial use. MSDE and SQL Server are Microsoft s database platforms.

MSDE has some restrictions: a limit of 2 GB databases, and it comes with no GUI tools to administer it. It also has a workload governor which reduces its speed once you exceed eight parallel programming workloads on the engine.

It can be distributed with commercial products by registering with Microsoft - in most cases this distribution is also free of charge. The product is intended primarily to compete with MySQL, and get users familiar with SQL Server, so that when they migrate to larger needs they will choose to purchase the retail version of SQL Server, rather than another database solution.

=SQL Slammer=

MSDE was affected by the SQL slammer worm and that increased the number of the systems affected. This, together with many home users unaware they have MSDE installed, worsened the impact of this worm. Also, if a computer running MSDE was infected with this worm via the Internet and then connected to a VPN, the SQL Servers inside the NAT can be infected. So one of the lessons learned from the SQL slammer worm was that all users of any applications that bundles MSDE and installs it during the application s setup should be aware of that.

=See also=

*Windows Server System *List of relational database management systems *Comparison of relational database management systems

=External links=