Licenses required for an asp.net web server

Question

What are the licences required for an asp.net (MVC) web application using sql server running a windows server ? Is Windows Web Server 2008 R2 enough for running SQL Server 2008 Web ? Is it possible (legal ?!) to install SQL Server on a "Web" operating system ? What are the limitations ? An official link would be nice

Answer 1

Catalin - you were one link away from the answer for licensing SQL Server on Windows Web Server:

On this page: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/licensing-overview.aspx you'll find the following:

"Windows Web Server 2008 licensing is enhanced to allow any type of database software on the server software with no limit on the number of users"

For SQL Server - you have to have a processor license as the number of clients for a web application is unknown (as a generalisation) so the CAL model doesn't work.

In terms of what you can do with the web edition (if express isn't sufficient and it often is) this is the page you want (specifically the Licensing section near the end of the page):

http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/web.aspx