AutoCAD Plant 3D toolset uses an SQL database to manage non-graphic data. The default SQL database engine delivered with Plant 3D is SQLite Everything you need to manage the data within a Plant3D project is delivered with Plant 3D and you do not need to be a database expert nor do you need to understand SQL databases in order to use SQLite. SQLite is a simple and effective solution for managing data in smaller projects where integration with enterprise databases is neither necessary nor desirable. Thus small companies can use SQLite for their projects and Plant 3D Data Manager will be an effective interface to the project and drawing data.
For larger organizations who have large amounts of data stored within Enterprise Databases, Plant 3D will support SQL Server. The inclusion of SQL Express in the Plant 3D allows you to select whether to use SQLite or connect to your corporate database.
When should I stick with SQLite and when should I use SQL Server? This is a difficult question to answer and it depends more on how you use the data than on how many users need to access the project database. If you are already using corporate databases and want to share the Plant 3D data with other database applications, then SQL Server is definitively the correct answer. If your project users are distributed geographically, then SQL Server may be the best solution as the database server will manage the distribution of the database, or manage the centralization of the data.
Regardless of whether you use SQLite or SQL Server, the Data Manager allows you to extract data to Excel spreadsheets for non-CAD users to manipulate the data.