SQL Server media belongs to which edition

Question

Could anyone please help me on below question?

Without installing SQL Server media 2008 and 2012, how can we know that the media belongs to which edition (like developer, standard or enterprise....etc)?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Per this thread on MSDN:

SQL 2008 onwards SQL server setup allows you to chose the option which edition you want to install. That means one media has the files of all edition.

and

..., the FULL media is good to install all editions, it depends on the PID you provide during setup.

The media layout is found in \MediaInfo.xml, and the default product key is in \<platform>\DefaultSetup.ini. Note that the product key is the same, regardless of platform.

Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to determine the available editions without running Setup and looking at the list after entering the product key. (I assume this is by design for security reasons.)

If you have a lot of these to validate, it's probably faster to grab a list of the product keys and check against the keys available in your MSDN subscription. The corollary to that is to always replace the default product key during Setup with one of the keys on MSDN.

Answer 2

In SQL Server media is same for all edition, it is the product key that determines what edition that will installed. The value of PID is picked from DefaultSetup.Ini file located on media. If there is no such file on Media then it would be enterprise evaluation edition of SQL Server.

Do not expect Microsoft to publish documentation that says which PID can belong to which edition.