Microsoft SQL Server

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MainBoss uses Microsoft's SQL Server 2008, 2008 R2 or 2014 to read and write all data. SQL Server must be installed at your site before you can begin using MainBoss. Specifically, you must have:

SQL Server 2008 SP1 or SQL Server 2008 R2
SQL Server 2014 (any version)
SQL Server 2016 (any version)
SQL Server 2017 (any version)

Note: Microsoft no longer supports SQL Server 2005. Therefore, Thinkage no longer supports MainBoss on that version of SQL Server. If you are still using SQL Server 2005, we recommend that you upgrade to a newer version as soon as possible.

If you've installed MainBoss, you can determine what version of SQL Server you have by going to Help →> About in the MainBoss menus.

While this Installation and Administration Guide offers suggestions of how to work with SQL Server, SQL Server is a Microsoft product and Thinkage has no control over its behavior. If you have any difficulties with SQL Server, contact Microsoft, not MainBoss support.

SQL Server is actually a family of compatible software products, with different members of the family designed for different work loads. If you have a small organization, you can use SQL Express, a free version of SQL Server available from Microsoft. For more information, see SQL Express Considerations.

SQL Express will likely be adequate if you intend to run the SQL Server on Windows 7 or 8 Professional. If you will have more than five simultaneous users, you should run SQL Server on Windows Server 2008 and buy a version of SQL Server whose size is appropriate to your needs.

If you intend to have multiple people using MainBoss, or you intend to access MainBoss from multiple machines, you should install SQL Server Management Studio and configuration tools at the same time that you install SQL Server. This is discussed in Appendix A: Setting Up SQL Server.

Your organization may already be using SQL Server for some other purpose or in connection with some other software package. In that case, you should use the same instance of SQL Server for MainBoss unless there's some good reason not to—trying to manage multiple instances of SQL Server can be confusing and prone to human error.