I'm about to embark on a fairly small Umbraco project.
Maybe 200 content nodes to start with, and perhaps 100 media items (guesstimate). A couple of back office users, and 20 or so members with access to a restricted "members' only" area of the site.
On larger sites, I've always used SQL Server.
However, I'm working on this particular project for another organisation, and I like the portability aspect of the site when using SQL CE (in that if they choose to host it somewhere else, I can just give them a folder of files, and it'll work - without having to worry about SQL backups and such like).
Are there any best practice reasons why I shouldn't use this approach for a small/medium site? For example, are there any security implications of having the .SDF database file with the user credentials etc. in the /app_data/ folder?
For what I've seen there is a huge speed disadvantage using SQL CE, factor of 100 times slower under certain circumstances. Plus I wouldn't guarantee that all packages would work. petapoco stuff can be different, so its down to how much testing any package writer has done.
I use SQL CE on some live Umbraco sites that have no content management happening on them. You might rightly ask, why are they in Umbraco at all. But if you actually have content editors, I would be nice to them and use real MS-SQL.
I hadn't realised that there was such a performance overhead on SQL CE - but this site I feel probably won't have much content editing going on once live. And the beauty of Umbraco is that on the whole, the front end of the site uses the memory cache of the documents/nodes - so a slower performing database engine is likely to mainly affect publishing, not browsing?
The only plugin we might use is MediaProtect from Soeteman Software, which we have an existing license for. This seems to work OK with SQL CE - so I guess we might give it a try.
It seems also that there is a migration path available to go from SQL CE to SQL Server if needs be.
so a slower performing database engine is likely to mainly affect publishing, not browsing?
I feel you already knew this answer, but to confirm, yeah, you are quite right, it won't affect browsing speed only publishing (As long as you ain't doing anything hideous in your front end code like using IContent - shudders).
It seems also that there is a migration path available to go from SQL CE to SQL Server if needs be.
I feel you already knew this answer, but to confirm, yeah, you are
quite right, it won't affect browsing speed only publishing (As long
as you ain't doing anything hideous in your front end code like using
IContent - shudders).
Cool, I think it will probably work OK for us then. I do still get a bit nervous about having the back-end database sat inside wwwroot - but I assume ASP.NET protects the app_data folder adequately from the attention of hackers etc. :-)
The entry in web.config looks like you might be able to store it somewhere other than in the app_data, as we might look at that too.
Any reason not to use SQL CE?
Hello all,
I'm about to embark on a fairly small Umbraco project.
Maybe 200 content nodes to start with, and perhaps 100 media items (guesstimate). A couple of back office users, and 20 or so members with access to a restricted "members' only" area of the site.
On larger sites, I've always used SQL Server.
However, I'm working on this particular project for another organisation, and I like the portability aspect of the site when using SQL CE (in that if they choose to host it somewhere else, I can just give them a folder of files, and it'll work - without having to worry about SQL backups and such like).
Are there any best practice reasons why I shouldn't use this approach for a small/medium site? For example, are there any security implications of having the .SDF database file with the user credentials etc. in the /app_data/ folder?
Thanks,
Steve.
Hey Steve,
For what I've seen there is a huge speed disadvantage using SQL CE, factor of 100 times slower under certain circumstances. Plus I wouldn't guarantee that all packages would work. petapoco stuff can be different, so its down to how much testing any package writer has done.
I use SQL CE on some live Umbraco sites that have no content management happening on them. You might rightly ask, why are they in Umbraco at all. But if you actually have content editors, I would be nice to them and use real MS-SQL.
Cheers
Jonathan
Hello Jonathan,
Thanks very much for your response.
I hadn't realised that there was such a performance overhead on SQL CE - but this site I feel probably won't have much content editing going on once live. And the beauty of Umbraco is that on the whole, the front end of the site uses the memory cache of the documents/nodes - so a slower performing database engine is likely to mainly affect publishing, not browsing?
The only plugin we might use is MediaProtect from Soeteman Software, which we have an existing license for. This seems to work OK with SQL CE - so I guess we might give it a try.
It seems also that there is a migration path available to go from SQL CE to SQL Server if needs be.
Cheers,
Steve.
I feel you already knew this answer, but to confirm, yeah, you are quite right, it won't affect browsing speed only publishing (As long as you ain't doing anything hideous in your front end code like using IContent - shudders).
Very true.
Cool, I think it will probably work OK for us then. I do still get a bit nervous about having the back-end database sat inside wwwroot - but I assume ASP.NET protects the app_data folder adequately from the attention of hackers etc. :-)
The entry in web.config looks like you might be able to store it somewhere other than in the app_data, as we might look at that too.
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