Overcoming the SQL Server Express Edition limitation

Question

Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Express edition has a database size limit to 10GB. Now, is that just for a single instance or the overall size that the edition will allow? Or does that means that I can have as many databases using the edition provided each database is less than 10GB?

Answer 1

From Express Edition:

SQL Server Express includes 10GB of storage per database

and from Features Supported by the Editions of SQL Server 2014, Cross-Box Scale Limits:

Maximum relational database size: 10 GB

This latter reference makes it clearer that the 10GB limit per database is applied to relational data, so it excludes log files* as well as FILESTREAM and FileTable data (both supported in Express Edition).

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_{* See Database size limitation in SQL Express by Arvind Shyamsundar}