BlackBerry® Enterprise Solution

[AndyDufresne]

If you want an answer that will appease legal people contact both RIM and Microsoft.

You'll possibly get 2 different answers.

That said, the answer I provided is used by myself, my company, and the 50,000+ devices supported.  Hopefully I'm not wrong.

[phil1969]

So far you and the contractor we're using to assist with the migration agree, and he has set up BES in a hundred environments or more.  You are correct that it's the internal licensing/legal people I need to appease.  We contacted RIM and they tell us 1 MSSQL license is all that's required.  If I can get the same answer out of a Microsoft rep we'll be set. 

Thanks for your help!

[AndyDufresne]

... I like this contractor; sounds like a smart guy.

Good luck getting the answer from Microsoft; hopefully it won't be too much trouble.  It'd be nice if RIM had a statement on this but I've never seen one.

[phil1969]

*deep sigh*

I really hate licensing.  Got this back from my MS Rep:

"I have just spoken with our Microsoft Licensing department and they have advised me that in your scenario, a SQL Device CAL is required and must be purchased for each Blackberry device accessing the Microsoft SQL Server through the Blackberry Enterprise Server. A SQL CAL is required for each connection, direct or indirect, made to the Microsoft SQL Server. Determining whether to purchase a User or Device CAL would depend on your specific scenario. A User CAL is good if you have more devices than users, I.E. 300 Blackberry devices shared among 200 employees.A Device CAL is good if you have more users than devices, I.E. 300 users sharing 200 Blackberry devices. 

User and Device CALs can be mixed as SQL has many different applications."

How many MS Licensing Reps do you have to speak to before you get the answer you want?

[AndyDufresne]

HAHAH, sorry I really shouldn't laugh.

So, I would now contact RIM, and indicate the response you received from Microsoft.

My take is the Microsoft rep really doesn't know how BES works; as these devices don't access SQL, either directly or indirectly.  The devices only communicate with BES.  BES uses SQL as a storage mechanism for data it uses; the devices never communicate with the DB.  BlackBerry handhelds and SQL server do NOT have a client / server relationship.

The real proof to this is that core BlackBerry handheld functionality continues even when a SQL database is offline.

Your experience is the #1 reason I generally avoid anything related to licensing.

[kerseyr]

Why are you worrying with MSSQL at this stage?

I thought you only had 100 users.

Sure... the BlackBerry users will grow but you can migrate when needed.

Use MSDE. :-)

[knottyrope]

Explain dbo.SyncBackupRestore table.

[AndyDufresne]

That is the BES pulling data from the handhelds and then storing it into the databases.

The devices do not initiate requests for this data, but rather the BES stores this data in the SQL database.  The device is not pushing this information to the SQL server; BES is pulling the information and using the database as a storage mechanism.  No device / user access from the BlackBerry handheld perspective.

Anything else?

[phil1969]

Well, after speaking to 2 different Microsoft Licensing Specialists (independently), the answer we got back from each of them is that this does fall under the multiplexing caveat in the MSSQL EULA and you must license their product per device (or per processor, which would end up making more sense very quickly). 

Anyway, legal and licensing will of course require us to adhere to the opinion of the maker of the software (i.e. the one who can sue us), so regardless of the technical realities we'll be sticking with MSDE at least for now.

Thanks to all for your input. 

[AndyDufresne]

I'm still confident that this isn't the case.  The BlackBerry devices don't access / need access to the database to function; the users / BlackBerry devices are NOT clients of SQL server.

Meh, this is why I hate licensing.

So ... have you gone back to RIM with this?