Hi!
First, you should take a look on the official MS Website to learn about the basics of licensing SQL Server: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy/default.mspx
I personal recommend to buy the “Enterprise Edition”. Of course, that’s the most expensive one, but due to no limits, it’s the best edition regarding to scalability of the system.
In my opionion, the NAV Runtime licensing is a quite good option, because one could save a lot of money! The Enterprise Edition SQL Server 2005 costs 220 EUR per User. So for a 25 User Environment, you’ll have to pay 5500 EUR - that’s all! The MS price here is about 14.000 USD (~ 10.000 EUR), which is almost the double price! If you have a VPO, you’ll also get discounts.
As the SQL Runtime license is part of the NAV license, you’ll have to pay the 10% annual upgrade fee for it - but this covers all upgrades to further versions of SQL Server! As far as I known, such an license upgrade is not available with usual MS licensing!
It is true, that it’s only permitted to run a NAV db with this RT license. But that’s all a matter of argumentation: e.g. if you have a POS db on the same server, which is interfacing with the NAV db, well, the POS db is actually part of the NAV system … to you HAVE to run it on this server [6]
Regards,