Detect Sql Express From TSQL

Question

I need a safe (i.e consistent, robust) way of detecting whether or not the sql server I'm accessing is Sql Express. I think I'd prefer to be able to do this from TSQL, since I already have a connection string and all the libraries I need to execute TSQL (this should help avoid issues with whether or not WMI is installed/running, the user has permissions to access the registry etc).

Does anyone know of a way to do this ?

Thanks.

PS: Basically I want to do this so I can monitor my database size against the 4gb limit and take action when I approach it... but if I'm running on a full Sql Server edition then I don't want the code to worry about it since there is no (practical) hard coded limit. I could put in a manual setting in my program, but it would be much nicer if the code just did the right thing automatically, hence the need to know if the server is the 'Express' edition or not.

Answer 1

Use

SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('EditionID')

or

SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('Edition')

to detect which version of SQLServer is running.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174396.aspx