Real simple liscensing question for sql server 2005.

Hell, I host web pages on a server(s) that I own, located in a datacenter.

I am trying to figure out how to properly liscnese sql server 2005.

I have called microsoft, and the people i talk to dont seem to understand my situation. They keep asking me about the number of employess i have, which is totally irrelevant.

Let me give you a basic example.

Example 1.

My personal web page has a blog on it. The blog data is stored in a SQL database. Its a popular blog, thousands of anonymous people reading my blog every month via my webpage. The only "thing" accessing the SQL databse is an asp.net script i write, which then turns around and presents the data via html over the www. just like every other blog in the universe.

Example 2.

I sell artwork over the internet via my web page. My web page uses a shopping cart system which makes use of an SQL database to keep track of inventory and orders etc. No one ever tries to connect to my database, they just use the shopping cart on my web page which of course connects to the database.

Now according to the MS liscensing documentation it seems that i can buy sql server w/ 5 device CAL's. Since I only have 1 or 2 webservers accessing the database server, that should be no problem right?

So my basic question is this: is a single Device CAL enough to allow one webserver to connect to one sql server and then show dynamic content to thousands of anonymous users (whoever happens to visit my sites?).

Thank you very much for any help you can provide.

viscious:

I have called microsoft, and the people i talk to dont seem to understand my situation.

You really need to try again to work with Microsoft on licensing, as this is a legal issue and they should be the best source of information on the licensing of their product.