After being un- and underemployed for five years, I started a job this month at a school for the blind and visually-impaired (BVI). We have two campuses and work with people from 3 years old to age 23, and the staff actually outnumber the students. We have a small IT staff, the core (computer/network hands-on) count went from four to five when I started. No current DBA, and as far as I can tell (I don't have unlimited access yet) they only have one SQL Server database that I suspect is running under Express, unknown what version.I'm developing a database that will be used by school districts across the state to enter BVI students in their districts that we don't know about to provide the students service. Maybe they need to come down to our campus occasionally for intensified training, maybe they need a Braille biology text book next year. Whatever. The point is to get them the services and training that they need to succeed, regardless of whether they stay in their home district or come down here (which doesn't cost the parents any money).It's a fairly simple database, no problem there. Only four or so live data tables that I'll be auditing, lots of lookup tables. The server it will run on will be leased and run through a major hosting provider, it will not be in the cloud, though I'm considering it as a backup option. I intend to replicate to a local server just for paranoia's sake. Nothing terribly complicated. Since we're dealing with student and medical information, the database and backups will be encrypted. The front end will initially (probably) be Access runtime hosted on the server (my VB skills are so old it isn't funny, and I'm pretty good at Access), which the users will connect to through a VPN. I'll be studying VB and probably some other languages after I get this mostly developed and have more time, no idea if I'll replace the front end, though. I've found runtime Access is good for simple projects since all DRI, reporting views, etc. will be on the server.It's a very small database. We're anticipating 2,000 records or so with a pretty low transaction volume, maybe 1,000 bytes per student record. The hosted VM is 120 gig and I think that'll be plenty of storage space. My specs are kind of vague, I have a preliminary design that I was given that they shopped around to some consultants before deciding to bring it in-house and hire me, but we haven't had a kick-off meeting yet so that I can talk to the stakeholders and refine it, that's two weeks away. I'm working on prototype #2 in SQL 2012, but that's all it'll be until after the meeting.I have no experience with 2012 or 2014, 2008 was the latest that I did any DBA or significant development work on. I'm working with a developer edition of 2012 right now, and I've been reading the Introducing 2014 ebook.So, the question is: I only see one compelling reason to go with 2014 Standard (I think Enterprise would be expensive overkill, but I don't know prices to us yet), and that's slightly longer legs. I initially thought the encrypted backups would be a deciding factor, but if the entire database is encrypted in 2012, the backup is also encrypted, so no bonus points to '14. We're not going to be doing any BI stuff with this, and it's not going to require a huge amount of horsepower. The only advantage for '14 that I see is that extended support will be two years further out, and I'll be long retired by then. The literature and experience base for 2012 is a developing fairly well, and I expect I'll be able to use a lot of that to do things in 2014. Cost isn't really an issue as it's included in the contract with the host provider, and since we're a school we get pretty deeply discounted from MS, and they don't own a copy yet.Your thoughts are most welcome and appreciated.
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