Web Hosting with IIS and ASP.NET

Re: Is there any hosting provider offering MSDE?

rspivack — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 19:57:29 GMT

Unfortunately, No!

There are still many hosting companies that provide Windows hosting illegally. The only legal way to provide Windows hosting is for a hosting company to be using the Microsoft SPLA (service providers licensing agreement). If a small hosting company simply buys a copy of Windows Server software they cannot use it for hosting. The licensing agreements with all software except SPLA does not allow hosting.

Many smaller hosting companies, even today, assume that because they bought a legal copy of Windows Server they can start a hosting business without any other requirements.

Why does this situation exist? Two reasons. Originally, licensing for Windows hosting was not defined by Microsoft. I think they did not focus on the hosting market and because the need arose, companies started hosting by using regular retail copies of Windows. After some time period, Microsoft started a hosting marketing effort and clarified their licensing agreements such that only SPLA licenses are valid for hosting.

Now, given that open-source movement and the popularity of Linux/Apache (in the hosting market, Linux/Apache has the largest market share and is used by more hosting companies than any other software), I believe Microsoft has chosen to walk a fine line. Companies that are hosting with Windows are helping the overall goal of Microsoft to show that Windows is an excellent platform for hosting and that Linux/Apache is not the only solution. So Microsoft probably doesn't want to be heavy-handed and forcibly shut-down this "guerrilla" Windows hosting companies by chasing them for violating the license. Instead, at least so far, Microsoft has been using the carrot approach of offering a lot of education, training, and support for hosting companies while encouraging them to apply for the SPLA licensing and "get legal".

When choosing a hosting company, you should ask them to confirm they are legally hosting using Microsoft SPLA licensed software. This is good for you too! Anyone hosting with Microsoft SPLA has demonstrated a certain level of competency and seriousness about being a hosting company that garage-shop hosters or teenagers with a server on a DSL line has not. It's a good way to qualify your potential hosting provider to avoid problems with your site or service later.

Sometimes the cost of "free hosting" can be a lot higher than you think

matojo2006 wrote:
The "Go Live" license is required for the hosting company itself, not for individual hosters, right? When a hosting company announce the hosting service, members can safely assume that the company have all required licenses. Am I right?
In this case, http://www.aspspider.net team may have signed the "Go Live" license agreement. I do not think each registered member has to sign it separately.

Re: Is there any hosting provider offering MSDE?

matojo2006 — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 12:46:57 GMT

The "Go Live" license is required for the hosting company itself, not for individual hosters, right? When a hosting company announce the hosting service, members can safely assume that the company have all required licenses. Am I right?
In this case, http://www.aspspider.net team may have signed the "Go Live" license agreement. I do not think each registered member has to sign it separately.

Re: Is there any hosting provider offering MSDE?

rspivack — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 01:14:02 GMT

SQL Server Express is NOT the same thing as MSDE.

Also, for the record, SQL Server Express and ASP.NET 2.0 are not released. Although just around the corner (November), current hosting offerings are based on beta level software. Legally, it requires the use of the Microsoft "Go Live" license. There is no mention of this on the site your mentioned which is a free site run by a few techies. Just because they aren't charging money doesn't eliminate the need for them to remain legal and abide by Microsoft licensing agreements. I would suggest you look elsewhere...

Re: Is there any hosting provider offering MSDE?

matojo2006 — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 00:59:36 GMT

sun21170 wrote:
I was looking for a ASP.Net hosting provider who would allow hosting of MSDE databases for development purposes on a web site. So far I haven't found any. They offer Access 2000 but not MSDE, and that is quite strange to me.

Try http://www.aspspider.net. They offer SQL Server Express and MS Access for free web hosting.

Re: Is there any hosting provider offering MSDE?

Mark@Helm — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 09:27:59 GMT

Microsoft do have a way of confusing things don't they ;-)

On they're site they call it "Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine" and not "Data Engine".

We distribute MSDE (what ever it's called!) with our product which we're entitled to do because of the microsft licences we hold. What I thought wasn't possible was for our customers (all hosting companies) to offer paid fir databases to their customers using MSDE. If they ARE infact able to do this legally then I have about 1000 people that will be very happy to hear so.

Re: Is there any hosting provider offering MSDE?

Caddre — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 23:30:43 GMT

The DE in MSDE is not Desktop Edition, there is full version that is Desktop Edition, MSDE is Microsoft Data Engine. If you are hosting in house you can deploy your application with MSDE, five concurrent users who can write and as many as 2500 read users at the same time. The version you cannot use to deploy is the Developer Edition it is Enterprise Edition for five concurrent users and used for development and testing because it cost $30 or less on the web.

Re: Is there any hosting provider offering MSDE?

Mark@Helm — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 19:49:31 GMT

Really? When did that change?

Re: Is there any hosting provider offering MSDE?

rspivack — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 18:55:24 GMT

This information is totally wrong. Try reading the previous posts in this thread. this has already be answered several times. Even Microsoft itself provides MSDE as part of hosting solution for ASP.NET hosting providers and Windows SharePoint Hosting.

Actually the "DE" of MSDE stands for Desktop Edition. MSDE can be distributed by developers with their applications but can't be used for hsoting commercial databases for customers. For that you need the full blown (and expensive!) MS SQL.

Re: Is there any hosting provider offering MSDE?

DougV — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 13:09:32 GMT

I had thought there were restrictions on the use of MSDE, hence my . I leave it to the experts.

Re: Is there any hosting provider offering MSDE?

Mark@Helm — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 09:16:16 GMT

Actually the "DE" of MSDE stands for Desktop Edition. MSDE can be distributed by developers with their applications but can't be used for hsoting commercial databases for customers. For that you need the full blown (and expensive!) MS SQL.

Re: Is there any hosting provider offering MSDE?

t-dog — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 09:27:35 GMT

Marvin's DotNetNuke cheap web hosting - your choice SQL 2000 or MSDE. free install for DotNetNuke, Community forum, Click on install for starter kits and more.

Re: Is there any hosting provider offering MSDE?

DougV — Tue, 31 May 2005 16:41:00 GMT

I think I'm finding out there is some history associated with MSDE. There's many broken Microsoft Links at their site, but older sources elsewhere seemed to indicate it as more restrictive. Newer info seems to agree with what you've said above. I've briefly read about Server 2005 Express, it seems to be pretty generous.

Re: Is there any hosting provider offering MSDE?

rspivack — Tue, 31 May 2005 15:27:23 GMT

MSDE was not originally created specifically for the web. It was created to give ISV and application developers an alternative to using the "JET" (MS Access) database engine bundled with their code.

By providing MSDE as a SQL Server compatible (subset) engine that is available free for developers, Microsoft was trying to give legions of VB and other programmers (both professional and part-time hobbiest/adventurers) a smoother migration path onto the SQL Server engine.

As ISV apps are written to use MSDE, scaling them up to larger environments and/or the web is much easier than upsizing Acess database applications to SQL Server which requires some conversion because Jet to SQL conversion is not a slam dunk.

This strategy is even more evident in the beta versions of Visual Studio.NET and Visual Web Designer which have tightly integrated SQL Server 2005 Express (the sucessor to MSDE) which virtually eliminates the need to use Jet or anything else even for simple database applications.

Re: Is there any hosting provider offering MSDE?

Caddre — Tue, 31 May 2005 14:02:13 GMT

"DE" in MSDE stands for Data Engine it was created as a web back end for Access users. Hope this helps.

Re: Is there any hosting provider offering MSDE?

DougV — Tue, 31 May 2005 13:14:59 GMT

What does "DE" stand for in "MSDE"?