Thursday, October 06, 2005

SBA on SBS -or- SBA using SQL?

Over the last few weeks, there has been a lot of talk about using Small Business Accounting with Small Business Server and/or with full Microsoft SQL Server. While a lot of the talk has been about how to get it to work, I was confused by the myriad of conflicting information about whether or not it's a supported configuration:

A post on Susan Bradley's Blog indicated that it was unsupported, but had the following tips on how to get it to work:

“What I have done is install Small Business Accounting on SBS2003. This results in an MSDE instance called MICROSOFTSMLBIZ being installed there. The instance can host the BCM database as well. You would install BCM on your workstation, set it up for sharing and add users. Then shut down Outlook and SQL on your workstation, copy the BCM database and log file to the server and use SQL Enterprise Manager to attach them there. Restart SQL and Outlook on the workstation. You should now be able to redirect Outlook to the copy of the database on the server.

Unfortunately this method is not supported by Microsoft as I mentioned in the meeting. In fact, if you have SBS Premium you can upgrade the MSDE instance to full SQL to remove any database size or number of user limitations.”

Source: http://msmvps.com/bradley/archive/2005/08/29/64572.aspx

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Another Blog indicated that SBA on SBS is somehow "now supported":

"We finally have a supported SBA/SBS solution. There will be a KB article coming out shortly to address this. But for now here are the details:

Customers/Partners can install SBA 2006 on an SBS Server (standard or premium)
Customers are within the EULA to install the same SBA 2006 media on ONE client (XP) machine

On SBS Premium, the installation must use the MSDE instance included with SBA 2006, not the native SQL 2000. Beginning with the release of SQL 2000, SQL 2000 supports multiple instances on a single server. These multiple instances can be either MSDE or full SQL 2000, or just about any combination of both."

Source: http://ts2community.com/blogs/stevencr/archive/2005/09/20/199.aspx

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When I talked to Microsoft Support for Small Business Accounting directly, they told me that SBA on SBS (and/or SQL) is still currently an unsupported configuration, but several people in the community have been able to get it to work. They also said that even though it is currently unsupported doesn't mean it won't be supported sometime soon.

Bottom Line: If you need it, it can work, but if you run into problems, don't call support. Look to the community since several have already done it successfully.

2 Comments:

At 4:10 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I installed SBA on my SBS last night ; with the help of Microsoft support and it is now working great.


Ernest

 
At 4:16 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I installed SBA on SBS2003 today. I created a SQL instance and istalled SBA to it directly. It takes an unnecessary amount of work, but it works.

Beware of the following: I uninstalled SBA & it broke SharePoint - reintalling SBA solved the problem. Also, I tried to uninstall the Transaction Migration Update, since I no longer needed it. This too broke SharePoint. Reinstalling the app permits users to access SharePoint. I did have to remove a MSNBC web part to get the site working again. So some web parts are probably still broken.

 

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