My server is slower than the average user's computer, should I still offload Access queries to SQL Server? [closed]
- by andrewb
Possible Duplicate:
How do you do Load Testing and Capacity Planning for Databases
I have a database set up with MS Access 2007 front ends and an SQL Server 2005 back end. At the moment, all the queries are saved in the front end as I've only recently moved to an SQL Server backend. I'm wondering how much of those queries I should save as stored procedures/views on SQL Server.
About the system
The number of concurrent users is only a handful, though it could be as high as 25 at one time (very unlikely).
The average computer has an Intel i3-2120 CPU running at 3.3 GHz, which gets a PassMark score of 3,987, whilst the server has an Intel Xeon E5335 running at 2.0 GHz, which gets a PassMark score of 2,637. Always an awkward situation when an i3 outperforms a Xeon... though the i3 is from Q1 2011 and the Xeon is Q2 2009.
There is potential for a server upgrade in the future, though it wouldn't come easy.
I'm inclined to move the queries to the back end, as they are beginning to take noticeable time and I figure that is a better way of doing things. I like the idea of throwing everything at the server, then pushing for a server upgrade. It makes more sense in my mind to be upgrading one server rather than 30 PCs.
Or am I being overzealous?
Why my question isn't a duplicate
It seems that my question has been misinterpreted and labelled a duplicate of quite a different question, one about testing and capacity planning. I'll try explain how my question is very different from the linked question.
The crux of my question is something like "Even though my server is technically slower, is it better to have it doing more of the queries?"
There's two ways that people could have answered this:
I agree the server is going to be slower, but the extra benefits of such and such (like the less Access the better) means you should move most to the server anyway. (OR no it doesn't outweigh the benefit, keep them in Access)
Actually the server will be faster because of such and such.
I'm hoping that people out there could provide some answers like this, and the question in the dupe link doesn't really provide either of these answers.
Ok sure, I suppose I could do extensive performance testing to compare Access queries running on a local machine to SQL Server queries running on the server, but that sounds like a very hard task (particularly performance testing of access) compared to someone giving some quick general guidance, and again, my question is looking for a lot more than immediate performance benefit.
