SQL Server Reviews

We primarily use the solution for non-management processes.

The product is very good at centralizing information.

The solution has very good features related to timezones.

The product is quite stable.

If you need to, you can scale the solution very easily.

The solution has legacy issues when it comes to compatibility. If you have older technology, you may run into compatibility problems with SQL.

The solution is rather expensive.

I've been using the solution for over a decade. It's been a long time. At this point, it's been about 12 years or so.

The stability of the solution is excellent. We don't run into any issues with bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's fairly reliable.

The solution scales well. if a company needs to expand its SQL server, it's not a problem to do so.

We do plan to continue to use it going forward. I'm unsure as to if we have plans to scale it, however.

I don't have too much information on technical support, however, it's my understanding that if you need it, it is available.

We did not previously use a different solution. We've only ever really used SQL.

The initial setup isn't too complex. It's pretty straightforward, especially if you are setting up the cloud. It's very easy to provision. It requires fairly typical knowledge. If you are familiar with Windows software, you'll find that there isn't much of a challenge to the setup. I'd say it's not overly technical.

Deployment is fast. You can have it up and running in an hour or sometimes less.

You need about two people to handle the deployment of the solution.

I handled the implementation myself. It's pretty easy, and not too technical, and therefore I didn't need the assistance of any consultants or integrators.

You do need to pay for licensing in order to use the solution. It is a little bit expensive, however, it's not the most expensive option on the market. It's cheaper than the competition, however, as I mentioned, it's still pretty pricey.

We're just a customer. We don't have a business relationship with the client.

We're using the latest version of the solution currently.

We use both cloud and on-premises deployment models.

I'd recommend this product to other organizations.

Overall, we've had a positive experience with the solution. I would rate it at an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution as a database for business operations.

I personally work with Microsoft products and therefore I like the continuity it provides. I like sticking with the brand.

The solution is very stable.

The product has very good online documentation that can be used for troubleshooting.

The solution can scale as necessary.

We've found the setup to be quick and relatively easy.

The licensing costs are very high.

I would like the scaling process to be more transparent and obvious.

There's a lot of documentation on the web, and it is quite extensive, and yet it isn't very well organized which makes it hard to find items often.

I've been using the solution for a very long time. It's been around ten years or more. I'd say it's been at least a decade at this point.

The stability of the solution is quite good. We don't have issues with it. It doesn't crash or freeze. We don't experience bugs or glitches. It's reliable.

While I personally haven't gone beyond 50 or so users, it's my understanding that as long as you pay for the licensing, you can grow as much as you need to. There would be costs involved, however, the solution can scale if a company needs it to. 

I'd love to have Microsoft explain to me the scaling process so that I could better understand it. Right now, I'm in the dark.

In terms of technical support, I can say that sometimes I need them. However, it's very difficult to contact Microsoft support for anything. 

In general, they have none. I wouldn't know how to reach them directly for help if I needed it.

Right now they have good support for their Azure product, in the cloud. However, this is not the case for on-premise products. That means, as an on-premise user, I have a problem. That said, since their product is well-known, there's a lot of documents on the web. If I try to search online I will typically find the answers I need. 

The initial setup is not complex. It's pretty straightforward. It takes an hour or less to set everything up. Some people may need a few hours, however, for me, less than an hour was enough. That said, the Windows Server would also take an hour or two to set up as well.

The solution certainly comes at a cost, however, for me, it's an acceptable cost. I find it acceptable due to the fact that it would be free if I use MySQL on-premise, however, then it would be hard to hire people to maintain it. It's a give and take. That said, the license cost is very very high. I'm afraid if I use it on a larger scale it will cost a lot.

Currently, we're just Microsoft customers, although we would like to have a partnership with the company in the future.

I haven't done the HA for SQL server yet, therefore, I'm not sure how hard it is and how difficult it would be to implement, or how stable and how scalable it is.

There are two markets really. It's Microsoft and non-Microsoft. If anyone is familiar with Microsoft products, then they should go with this, however, they should bear in mind that it comes at a cost. The SQL cost is quite high if a company is using it at a large scale.

That said, if a company is looking at something small scale, there is a free edition. I use the standard edition, and it won't cost too much. 

In any case, for those that aren't tied to Microsoft options, there are a lot of products out there that might be suitable with very little overhead.

In general, I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

We use the solution for many tasks. We use it as a data warehouse. However, we also use it for workflows and processing jobs.

The analytics are pretty good.

As a data warehouse and storage solution, it's quite good.

It's easy to put the data back onto the SQL Server or Oracle. 

The solution is pretty fast. We find it to be responsive.

There are a lot of services, such as the SSISS, SIS, and SSI's that work quite well.

The solution could use better governance on the management side, especially around data governance.

The product could do better at allowing for integrations. 

I've been working with the solution for many years. It's likely ten to 15 years at this point. It's well over a decade, so I have some long-term experience with the product overall.

The scalability for the solution is good, at least where it concerns the cloud. Using the cloud makes everything very easy to scale. On-remises, if you run out of dick space, it's a bit difficult.

We've been in touch with technical support in the past. We manage the data center ourselves, however, if we run into issues we know we can contact them for assistance. I'd say we are quite satisfied with the level of support we get.

I can't recall how the initial setup was. It was a while ago. We've had the solution for a very long time.

We're just customers and end-users.

I don't know if I would recommend the solution per se. There are other options out there. Something that is a NoSQL database. Something like Snowflake, for example, might be a very good option for data warehousing. They are more adept at handling different types of data.

You shouldn't have to create tables or systems, you should just be able to query files.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. However, for the current scenarios we have, there are other options that may be more suitable. It's not the only product available on the market, and the competition is quite good.

The columnstore index feature is useful for us, and we also use the integration services. It is also very stable.

We would like to have a common storage option in the SQL Server. This option is available in Oracle Database. It would be great if Microsoft could create something like a columnstore that has not only indexing but also tables for common storage.

I have been using SQL Server for four years.

It is pretty stable.

If we talk about just standard RDBMS, it is very scalable because we don't have to scale platforms.

All communication with Microsoft technical support is done by our internal support group. I'm not communicating with them directly. I guess their technical support is okay and fast.

I would recommend SQL Server as a solution for a medium enterprise or a small business.

I would rate SQL Server an eight out of ten.

We are using this solution for business websites.

The most valuable features are programmability and reliability.

Price could be cheaper, and access to reporting tools should be better.

I have been working with SQL Server for more than 20 years.

It's a stable product.

It has limited scalability, but it's perfectly adequate for our needs. We apply vertical scalability to it and not horizontal.

We are a very small software development company, scaling is not an issue for us.

Technical support is good.

In general, we use what is available on the web, rather than talking to people. The articles on the web are more useful.

We have no particular issue with Microsoft.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was very easy to do.

The price could be cheaper.

The marketing for dealer support and that type of environment is very contorted. It's very difficult to access, but, with the technical side of things, they are fine.

My experience is limited, but compared with Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server is many times better and easier to program with. So, I love Microsoft. I don't like Oracle.

I would rate SQL Server a ten out of ten.

We are a software development company. Most of our developers use SQL Server. We plan to continue using this solution in the future.

We use SQL Server for relational database management.

We have a variety of customers who use it in the government sector and in the tourism sector.

The time series database could be improved. There needs to be more storage space for large documents.

The user interface and the reporting could also be improved. It's not bad, but it could be improved upon.

I have been using this solution for 20 years.

SQL Server is both scalable and stable.

The technical support is good.

Installation was very easy. We had it installed within one hour.

One of our team members deployed it.

I would definitely recommend this solution to others.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give SQL Server a rating of eight.

My primary use case is for data mining and processing data from plants. It's normally just for databases for the systems.

The availability is the most valuable feature. It has high availability. It also has good performance. 

In terms of improvement, it could use more integration with other products.

I have been using this solution for around ten years. 

The stability is good. We don't have any issues with stability or scalability. 

We have contacted support when we had Windows issues. They are okay, not the best but not the worst. They know what they're doing but they take a little too long. The response time isn't so good. 

The initial setup is mostly straightforward. The time it takes to deploy depends on the circumstances. It takes around three or four hours. 

I would recommend this solution. It's a good product. I am satisfied with it. It's familiar, we've been using SQL for a while. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten. There's always room for improvement. 

Mainly, I do infrastructure support. We do fine-tuning, information, configuration, higher-level availability, and replication. Also, single and clustering solutions - both kinds.

We do on-premises and cloud deployments. This is because some customers use Microsoft Azure, mainly in the financial sector, such as the Sri Lanka Government, who has many databases that cannot go on the cloud. The financial sector also works with on-prem databases.

I am mainly using the SQL Server from 2019. That's the latest version since last January while our customers are mainly using the 2016 and 2017 versions. This is because we are not providing the latest version. We are testing some bugs now. In terms of functionality, I think the 2017 version is better. I have not fully tested the 2019, so I cannot give a recommendation for it.

Its availability for a secured server is one of its most valuable features. Also its replication features are valuable- we can manage eight replicas. Their clustering and availability groups are also valuable.

They do not offer the SQL Server Management tool via the installation. It is a separate tool I use when I'm trying to configure the mirroring with SQL Server Mirroring. This is not supported and I'm getting some errors on the database mirroring. So sometimes I use the 2014 management console and the 2017 server for that. If the customer does not agree to that, I use a query for the database mirroring connections.

Additionally, I think some kind of machine learning related feature should be included. This is because technology is moving fast and all of the customers are getting it easier. So developers are making machine learning products. That's why they should include some kind of a machine learning feature here, too.

Which initial setup are you referring too? It has multiple solutions and installations, some of which are very simple. Clustering is very difficult to setup.

Setup time depends on the customer's environment, including database size, the number of databases, and the amount of data. Last week I did a PLC with two databases and one availability crew. It took two days because one day I did clustering. It can be done in one day but the customer provides another day for that.

Also, because the customers haven't kept some downtime, we request some kind of downtime for the primary server. So sometimes we plan downtime when we need some days for the complete environment.

I'm working with Microsoft solutions in Sri Lanka. We have a technical team for the DB side only - Microsoft SQL Servers, Azure platform, SQL servers. All of those have a security device. And as I mentioned, installation is per requirement. There is no need for a couple of engineers for that.

In terms of maintenance after the deployment, it also varies depending on the number of databases.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Microsoft MDS an eight. I'd give it an 8 and not a 10 because it lacks some features, such as machine learning.