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by TheTravCav 3749 days ago
I can just imagine a sql server team meeting where they discuss sql server's effect on laptop battery life. Given sql server's intended environment, I almost wonder if its activity is intentional.
4 comments

Power consumption is a concern even in data centers, but yeah, the power cost of this inefficiency is probably inconsequential in situations where sqlservr is actually being used.

But, VS installed and started sqlservr on millions of developer machines so they should have paid some attention to this issue. Super sloppy.

it's also installed by millions of other applications - a sony laptop I had once shipped with some "music management" app installed by default that used it.
> Super sloppy.

You don't need to install SQL Server Express, just pay a bit more attention to what you're installing.

What if I need it occasionally? Should I stop and start the server process as needed?

If so, why? Why shouldn't it just behave reasonably? Computers should be our slaves.

So true, if only more users realized this. I for one really appreciate your work this.

Users don't understand that computer resources like CPU time and battery level are really their property. It is an awful like paying a hidden poor quality tax.

It is not unreasonable to expect software to not waste CPU and battery time.

Windows Longhorn (Vista before the development reboot) actually shipped with SQL Server Express for WinFS. Though dotNet based shell and SQL Server Express based WinFS was too slow and consumed too much CPU resources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS

WinFS was too slow and consumed too much CPU resources.

I'm genuinely curious what your source is for this. From the following uncited text on Wikipedia?

"An early revision of WinFS was also included, but very little in the way of a user interface was included, and as such it appeared to early testers to be nothing more than a service that consumed large amounts of memory and processor time."

Or do you have another source?

WinFS betas were released post-Longhorn as well.

I tested it back then. And WinFS beta2 also on WinXP. It was really slow.
Not to mention SQL Slammer. I read that MSDE 2000 SP3 was not released until the day after it spread on the Internet.
Well, it's Express. Five years ago, when most development happened on a desktop, I'd agree. These days most developers have laptops. I guess it's time for them to revisit their Express config.
Also interesting is the default 'Balanced' power-saving settings for Windows Server 2008.

http://serverfault.com/questions/94212/does-cpu-power-manage...