We are planning to migrate our existing BizTalk applications to BizTalk 2013 R2. As per the Microsoft documentation, it says , the recommended version of SQL should be SQL Server 2014 or SQL Server 2012 SP1 (Enterprise/Standard Edition). Using SQL Server Express Edition in a production environment is not recommended. The Express edition does not include certain features needed by BizTalk Server.
We are not using any EDI or BAM. only using EAI Applications. Still we need SQL Standard or Enterprise edition? can't we use SQL Express edition in Production?.
It's very simple, NO, you cannot use SQL Server Express in Production.
There is no way around this and you should not be using it for DEV/TEST either.
Actually, this documentation is flat out wrong. SQL Server Express does not include the SQL Agent which performs many critical BizTalk functions.