Differentiate between MSDE and full blown SQL Server

[Lars_Vopicka]

Hi Guys
for licensing purposes I need to know how to differntiate SQL-Servers from MSDEs.

Scanning for Software throws out lots of "Microsoft SQL Server 200x". As far as I can see there are a lot of Desktop Engines among the result.

I do need to identify SQL-Servers only.
Anyhow if I searched for "Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine" I get fewer results than expected.
Somehow this result is not reliable.

I have checked the registries of MSDEs as well as of real SQL-Servers. Depending on Version an Patchlevel the keys are all very different and I am unable to recognise a plausible pattern.

Maybe sombody else managed to get correct results on that?

Any clues are welcome!
Lars

[taeratrin]

If none of the MSDE installs are on actual servers and all of the full SQL installations are, then you could cross-reference by the domainrole value in tblComputersystem table. Anything >= 2 is a server.

[derek_rose]

taeratrin wrote:
If none of the MSDE installs are on actual servers and all of the full SQL installations are, then you could cross-reference by the domainrole value in tblComputersystem table. Anything >= 2 is a server.

In my environment that wouldn't always be totally helpful because some people have the server software installed on their workstations for (testing purposes) from MSDN copies. These are the ones I'm trying to track down, as well as validate license count from our servers

[Hemoco]

Maybe this key can be interesting.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\Setup
Value "Edition"
Value "Version"

They exist on my sql 2008 machine.

[LithiumKid1976]

same here guys, looking for the same answer as lars.vopicka......

id be interested to see if anyone has an answer.

😞

[KHabershon]

I am also looking for something of this nature. Even doing a query for just SQL Server I'm getting a lot of Desktop Engine's showing up. Anyone have any ideas?