Comparing Characteristics of On-Premises with Office 365’s Hosted Share Point Server 2010

Updated 3/13/2011: Added links to MSDN’s Configuring Reporting Services for SharePoint 2010 Integration topic and other information about SharePoint Server 2011’s Access Services (see end of post.)

Following are a list and table that describe differences between SharePoint Server 2010 running on premises and hosted by Office 365:

The main differences between Access Services on Office 365 and setting it up on your own SP server are as follows:

1. The throttles are set to the default values on Office 365 whereas if you set it up yourself you can configure it to whatever is in between the throttles we have. See the chart below for details.

2. Access Services on Office 365 will not have reporting configured when it releases. If you set up reporting yourself, you can configure reports to run in local or connected mode. * [Emphasis added.]

3. Access Services on Office 365 has a money back guarantee for 99.9% uptime. If you set it up yourself, there is no guarantee it will have the same uptime.

4. Access Services on Office 365 permissions use LiveId whereas you can use other permission models setting up Access Services yourself.

5. Access Services on Office 365 has a set cost per month whereas setting the server up on prem the cost is more variable.

 

Access Services On-Premises	Office 365
Max Columns Per Query: 1-255	Max Columns Per Query: 40
Max Rows Per Query: 1-200000	Max Rows Per Query: 25000
Max Sources Per Query: 1-20	Max Sources Per Query: 12
Maximum Calculated Columns Per Query: 0-32	Maximum Calculated Columns Per Query: 10
Maximum Order By Clauses Per Query: 0-8	Maximum Order By Clauses Per Query: 4
Maximum Records Per Table: any	Maximum Records Per Table: 500000
Maximum Application Log Size: no limit	Maximum Application Log Size: 3000 records
Max Request Duration: 24 days The maximum duration (in seconds) allowed for a request from an application.	Max Request Duration: 30 seconds
Maximum Sessions Per User: no limit The maximum number of sessions allowed per user. If a user has this many sessions and starts a new session, the user's oldest session is deleted.	Maximum Sessions Per User: 10
Maximum Sessions Per Anonymous User: no limit: no limit The maximum number of sessions allowed per anonymous user. If this maximum is hit the oldest session will be deleted when a new session is started.	Maximum Sessions Per Anonymous User: 25
Cache Timeout: 1- 24 days The maximum time (in seconds) that a data cache can remain available, as measured from the end of each request for data in that cache.	Cache Timeout: 1500s
Maximum Session Memory: 0-4095 The maximum amount of memory (in MB) that a single session can use.	Maximum Session Memory: 64 MB
Maximum Private Bytes: no limit The maximum number of private bytes (in MB) allocated by the Access Database Service process.	Maximum Private Bytes: 50% of physical memory on the machine
Maximum Template Size: no limit The maximum size (in MB) allowed for Access Templates (ACCDT).	Maximum Template Size: 30 MB

Note that Office 365 characteristics may differ in the release version.

Thanks to Access Program Manager Ryan McMinn (@msaccess) for the preceding data, which will be incorporated in my first and third Webcasts presented by QUE Publishing on 3/29 and 5/10/2011.

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* Updated 3/13/2011: Printing reports requires configuring SQL Server Reporting Services to view and print reports. To learn more about configuring SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services for Access Services, see MSDN’s Configuring Reporting Services for SharePoint 2010 Integration topic.

AccessHosting.com’s online implementation of Access Services provides fully preconfigured Reporting Services (see my Access Web Databases on AccessHosting.com: Viewing, Printing and Editing Reports post of 3/13/2011.)

Derek Goodridge’s Thoughts on Access Services in SharePoint 2010 blog post of 1/16/2011 offers insights primarily about on-premises Access Services installations and includes links to these Web Database resources:

• Access Product Team Blog: Access Services Overview and Install Information
• Access Product Team Blog: Publish to SharePoint (part 1)
• The Access Show: Access 2010 Demo of Access Services and Web Databases
• The Access Show: Publish an Access 2007 Database to SharePoint with Access 2010
• Albert Kallal’s Access 2010 web database demo video

Robert L. Bogue’s SharePoint 2010 and Access Services’ Place blog post of 1/10/2011 is a reasoned third-party view of appropriate use of on-premises Access Services.

Clint Patterson’s More Office 365 Answers post of 10/22/2011 to the Microsoft Office 365 Blog provides additional details about Office 365’ implementation of Access Services.

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