Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft SQL Server and Azure SQL design, tuning, upgrades, edition planning and support.
When a line-of-business application stores its data in Microsoft SQL Server, including a product the company bought rather than built, that database can support reports, alerts, imports and exports the application itself does not offer, provided the vendor's support terms allow direct access.
IKRC designs, tunes, upgrades and supports SQL Server and Azure SQL databases. Edition choice comes early, and SQL Server 2025 changed several limits:
- Express is free, with a 50 GB maximum database size on Windows in SQL Server 2025, capped at one socket or four cores, and without log shipping. Earlier versions list 10 GB, and as of September 2026 Microsoft's SQL Server 2025 on Linux editions page still lists 10 GB
- Standard can use the lesser of 4 sockets or 32 cores and up to 256 GB of buffer pool memory in SQL Server 2025
- Full Always On availability groups require Enterprise; Standard has basic availability groups with two replicas and one database
- Web edition is discontinued in SQL Server 2025
For upgrades, Microsoft's recommended workflow keeps the old database compatibility level at first, lets Query Store capture a baseline, then raises the level and uses Query Store to find and fix queries that regress. For development work inside the database, see Database Development.
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Describe the system or process you want built or fixed, and we will follow up to talk through the project.
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