Developing windows app having SQL as DB

Question

Hello friends,
We are planning to develop a windows application having SQL as DB in house.
Our organisation is small < 1000 employees.
But do have 4 branches. We've firm developers enough to build our own software.
But need to know

1. What softwares to be bought? Like Visual studio, SQL, anything else? We need our software to auto send SMS for sure and may mails in future.
2. What kind of licenses should be bought? Both VS and SQL. We've atleast 50 + systems where data entry happens. Also data search, printing reports, reviewing reports too happen apart from data entry.
3. How many counts of licences in each VS and SQL should be purchased?
4. Any other suggestions or advices?

Expecting your help with our concerns asap.

Thank you!

Answer 1

Unfortunately there are any # of answers to your question. You should really do some research into exactly what you are looking for because this question is entirely too broad.

1) Software:
a) Development - completely depends upon type of application you want to build and language you will be using. C#/C++/VB then use Visual Studio 2019. Python/Perl/Java/... use the IDE that works best for them.
b) Database - Again completely depends upon the database you want to use. Research the DBs that have the features you need (relational, document, graph, etc) and then research the available products for those databases. For relational SQL Server or Oracle or MySql or Sqlite would be options; for document databases then Mongo or Cosmos or whatever.
c) SMS requires a third party library. The library you'll use is determined by what features you want and what platform/language you're using.
d) Email requires a library or use of SMS. Some platforms like .NET support it out of the box. Other platforms will probably require you to download a library that works with that language using whatever package management system that language uses.
2) Completely depends upon the IDE and database you intend to use. All of them are different. For Visual Studio you can buy a Pro license for each developer (not for each user of your end system). For the database you'll likely start with a standard version (such as SQL Server Standard). DBs tend to be licensed per CPU or per user, depending upon the database you use. Start small and update the licensing as you determine your needs. For example a single CPU license is probably fine for 50 people in a simple DB but will likely become an issue if you throw reporting or complex queries on top of that. Thus a higher CPU license would work better. You'll ultimately need to have a DBA profile this and determine where DB bottlenecks are (CPU, memory, disk, etc) and then update that portion of your database server.
3) Again, depends upon tool. Visual Studio Pro requires a license per developer. If you have someone who only occasionally codes then they can get away with the free VS Community but your core devs should use pro. SQL licensing I already talked about. Other DBs have similar licensing but you'll need to read their docs.
4) At this point you need to look at your team and their skillsets, what type of app you intend to build and what the requirements are going to be to support the DB. This will determine what tools, database and licensing you'll need.

Answer 2

1 more question do we need to buy SQL standard CAL license too?