One database is used to run P6 Professional and store data used by all P6 Professional applications.
For detailed steps on installing Microsoft SQL Server, refer to Microsoft's SQL Server database documentation.
P6 Professional supports Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases. See Client and Server Requirements for details on which versions are supported. Microsoft SQL Server software must be installed on the database servers before you can create the database.
You can run the database wizard to automatically create a database structure and load application data into it; or, you can manually configure the database structures and then run a batch file to load application data. This chapter walks you through the automatic method. See Manual SQL Server Database Configuration for the manual instructions.
Note: See Automatic Database Upgrade Considerations and Prerequisites for details if you have previously installed and configured P6 Professional databases and want to upgrade to the current version.
See Database Administration for additional tips and considerations related to database performance along with additional settings.
Microsoft SQL Server Considerations
Before installing the P6 Professional database, consider the following:
- If you intend to run P6 Professional on a Microsoft SQL Server database server, the required Microsoft SQL Server client files are automatically installed when you install P6 Professional on a client machine.
- To prevent duplicate values in P6 EPPM modules appearing due to leading or trailing spaces, ensure that the ANSI_PADDING setting in Microsoft SQL Server is Off. For example, if one user enters "Equipment" and another user enters " Equipment" (with a leading space) for resource codes, the database will store both of these as valid values if ANSI_PADDING is On. If ANSI_PADDING is Off, the database will remove the leading space in the second entry and tell the user to enter a unique ID. See the documentation included with Microsoft SQL Server for more information.
- See P6 EPPM Database Connections Using a Non-Default Microsoft SQL Server Port if you will be using a non-default port for Microsoft SQL Server for additional configuration instructions after installation.
- A SQL database name must not contain a space.
Note: P6 EPPM does not support passwords with multi-byte characters.
To configure the SQL database server for SSL, please see instructions for configuring SQL Database Server SSL in the Microsoft Documentation. Questions and support for SQL Server installation or configurations should be directed to the database vendor, Microsoft.