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How many users can I expect to be able to support on my site?
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The applications can use either a JET database or a SQL Server database.
Included with the applications is an MDB file. The MDB file is the database used by the Microsoft
JET database engine (which is also used in Microsoft Access). While the database itself can handle thousands of users entered in the database,
the real world limitations with JET come into play with the number of simultaneous users accessing
your site. The point at which the JET engine starts to become overwhelmed and
breaks down is dependant on many factors. However, most current servers should be able to handle somewhere up to 20-40 simultaneous users
on your site before the server becomes too heavy taxed by the JET database
engine.
Using a SQL Server database is very different. SQL Server is an extremely more powerful platform for storing data. It can handle much larger sets of data, and
drastically more simultaneous activity. So, with a SQL Server database, you can
typically expect to handle simultaneous user counts well into the hundreds or thousands.
Again, the limitations with either database do depend heavily on your server's configuration and activity. Obviously if you try running
your site on a 133 Mhz Pentium machine with 32 Mb of RAM as your server, it's not going work well under any load. As a general guideline, if your entire site's traffic is under
4000 hits per day, you should be able to expect to safely use a JET database. If your site is experiencing more traffic than that, you should
seriously consider using a SQL Server database. Note: You can get significantly more overall performance from your site if the IIS server and the SQL server are not running on the same machine. If your site is hosted with an ISP, you should ask them about their
server configuration to estimate what their limitations for supporting your site
might be.
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