We are migrating several old mainframe applications for a customer to newer ASP.NET + SQL Server 2005 applications. Each application is generally thought of as standalone with no shared data between them, and do things like manage specialized inventory needs or vacation policy. The data is small and shouldn’t outgrow a single SQL Server. Is it better to create one large database for all of these apps to share, or multiple smaller databases- one for each app?
In general, we prefer one small db per app, but a case could be made that a larger database is easier to manage backups and security. What factors should be considered in making this decision?
I’d highly recommend the small db per app approach. If one application crashes and corrupts its tables, you don’t want to have to piece through and do a selective restore of only certain tables. Being able to drop and load is far better for maintenance and any unforseen updates you have to do in the future.