SQL Server Reviews

In my data warehousing project, I use SQL Server alongside Power BI. SQL Server serves as the data storage solution, while Power BI is used for data visualization.

The most valuable features for database management in SQL Server are SQL Server Management Studio and Visual Studio Code with its administration capabilities.

Improvement in SQL Server should focus on lowering the high cost, especially for environments requiring extensive CPU and memory usage like data warehousing. While existing features are great, affordability is a significant concern, particularly for enterprise licenses. Additionally, enhancements in managing availability groups and clustering could be beneficial.

I have been working with SQL Server for 20 years.

I would rate the stability of the solution as a nine out of ten.

SQL Server is highly scalable, but the scalability comes with a price tag. Additionally, for on-premise deployments, hardware purchase is necessary, which can be a limiting factor. I would rate the scalability of the solution as an eight out of ten. We have approximately 500 users at our company.

My experience with SQL Server's customer support has been positive in the past, but recently, I have noticed a decline in responsiveness, and now I would rate them as an eight out of ten instead of a perfect ten. While I used to receive prompt answers to my inquiries, I have had a question pending for several weeks now without a resolution. It seems that Microsoft's focus on Azure may be impacting their support for on-premise solutions like SQL Server.

Positive

The initial setup of SQL Server is straightforward and user-friendly and I would rate it at around an eight out of ten for ease of use. While the basic setup is simple, additional considerations for security may require some tweaking. 

Deploying a SQL Server for testing purposes typically takes around ten minutes, while for production, it can take an entire day due to the additional tweaking required for optimal performance and security.

SQL Server is generally more expensive than other solutions. I would rate the price of the enterprise version of SQL Server as a ten out of ten for being very expensive compared to the standard version. The enterprise version costs approximately 20 times more than the standard version.

We use SQL Server Availability Groups for high availability. It supports our requirements well and is preferred over cluster solutions for its effectiveness.

SQL Server offers advanced security features like data masking, which allows users to restrict access to specific columns, enhancing data privacy and control. This capability is particularly useful for protecting sensitive information from even database administrators.

SQL Server is the primary technology we use, tightly integrated with our existing IT infrastructure and applications. We rely on Microsoft products for seamless compatibility and avoid unnecessary complexity by sticking to a single vendor ecosystem.

My recommendation for using SQL Server is that it is a stable and versatile option with a lot of capabilities. However, there are cheaper alternatives available on the internet that offer similar performance. It is essential to consider whether the cost difference justifies the added performance of SQL Server, especially when cheaper options can achieve comparable results with slightly slower hardware.

Overall, I would rate SQL Server as an eight out of ten.

We use the solution for continuous integration, including CI/CD integration.

Support could be improved.

I have been using SQL Server since 1992. I’ve used AWS and Azure for two and three years, respectively.

The stability is fine, especially if you're hosting it on AWS or Azure. You can get up to 99.99% stability on AWS.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

You can scale to any extent. You need to increase your EC2 or your app server.

Six team sites with 50 users each are using this solution.

Sometimes the response time was high.

The initial setup is straightforward. Depending on the complexity, setting up the infrastructure can take a while. You can work on MVP. To deploy on AWS, select SQL Server along with several calls and CPU.

The solution was deployed in-house.

You receive other products, like free usage, depending on the number of product shares.

You can use a Cloudflare or web application layer that controls security. Furthermore, you can implement SQL reverse proxy practices for in-house environments and beyond.

To ensure the security of my SQL server, we typically set up a configuration where an API communicates with the SQL Server, and there's a front-end interface. This setup prevents direct access to the database.

Four people are required for the solution’s maintenance, but it depends on the complexity of the solution. You can put one senior and three trainees.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use SQL Server for tuning data transactional language.

The product helps me tune the transactional language with the databases of our organization.

The product’s most valuable features are flexibility and scalability.

SQL Server could be more robust than Oracle.

I have been using SQL Server for ten years.

The product could be more stable than Oracle.

It is a scalable product.

The technical support services need improvement in terms of communication. It is difficult to understand the accents of the executives from different countries.

The initial setup is easy. The deployment services cost around $2000 to $3000.

SQL Server generates more return on investment than Oracle servers.

The product’s price depends on the specific server requirements.

I rate SQL Server an eight out of ten. It is easy to learn Microsoft products. There is a lot of information available about it on the internet.

We use it for both development and administration purposes.  

It's serving our data solution needs okay. 

I like that it's the Always On Availability Groups setup. It ensures our servers are always running.

We need it to support Linux for better troubleshooting flexibility.

I have been using this product for five years. We currently use the older versions, SQL Server 2019 and 2017.

We will soon migrate to the 2022 version. 

It works perfectly. No issues there. 

So, it is a stable product. 

There are around 300 to 500 end users using it. 

We use it for our on-premises solutions, virtual servers and SSAS, SSRS packages. Also, our applications are .NET based, so it made sense to use it. 

The initial setup is very easy. It is easy to understand. 

It is an expensive product. 

I would recommend using it , but it's best if you already know how it works.

Overall, I would rate the solution a six out of ten. 

We use the solution as the backend for the application.

SQL Server is a backend for software products that our company writes and distributes.

SQL Server is easy to use, but there is a great deal of complexity that you can dive into to use it to its best. Also, it integrates well with other platforms.

SQL Server should make the pricing simpler. It should add simplified load-balancing features.

I have been using SQL Server for 24 years.

There's a reporting database feature in SQL Server, but running multiple instances on the same box would be beneficial. That's one limitation we've encountered. Many of our customers utilize a hosting provider that offers multi-tenant SQL Servers, but we cannot implement a multi-tenant reporting database. 

The solution’s scalability is good.

There are a lot of different deployment options. The default options will work pretty well. We have to change a few things for our setup. Deployment is not at all long. It takes a couple of minutes. It took a long time for the first time because I had to go back and redo it and change the configuration, but it runs pretty smoothly now.

The deployment process follows: mount the ISO and run a script. That script retrieves some entries from a table and creates several instances based on that table using active directory SQL Server accounts, which is an out-of-the-box option. There are a lot of features that you can add to the setup to make it quieter. We've automated it so we can spin up an instance as needed for development processes.

Deployment was done in-house.

Overall, I rate the solution a 9 out of 10.

The solution is used as our backend database for our in-house applications. 

It's consolidated all of our Microsoft Access databases.

Having everything in one centralized set of databases is the most valuable feature.

Over the years additional features, data warehousing, cubing, just better performance and better manageability in terms of the actual Microsoft SQL Server AppLINK console.

I have experience with SQL Server. 

It is a highly stable solution. It was our database of choice because of its reliability. It just does what it says on the tin. We've never experienced any issues with it. I've never experienced any issues with it crashing or anything like that. 

The solution is very scalability. I rate the scalability a ten out of ten. 

Their technical team is very efficient. 

Positive

We switched to SQL for the reliability and scalability.

The initial setup is cumbersome as it's very menu-driven. The deployment takes half a day's time. We run it on a virtual machine or virtual service. We build a virtual server. We downloaded the ISO from Microsoft's licensing website.

I rate the setup an eight out of ten. 

The deployment was done by a single person, in-house. 

The SQL server is affordable. I rate the pricing a five out of ten. 

I rate the overall solution a ten out of ten. 

We use it for the banking database. It is for banking software, accounting software, and human resource software that we develop to run our bank.

In our production environment, we are using SQL Server 2014 Enterprise, but we also have an installation of SQL Server 2019 for our development environment.

It is secure, and it is fast. For our present database size, we are using the Always-On feature on SQL Server so that our transactions are replicated among three servers. If one server goes down, we can find the data from other servers. We have benefited from this feature.

We use SQL Server Reporting Services, and it is very good. We use scheduled jobs to transfer reports from one server to another server. 

It needs to be improved to handle big data for large volumes of transactions for big industries. As compared to Oracle Database, SQL Server is not suitable for big data or large organizations where the database size could be more than 100 GB or more. In our country, for a large database and a large volume of transactions, we normally use Oracle Database. Most of the large banks are shifting from SQL Server to Oracle Database because of its slowness. 

We have been using this solution since 2008.

For big organizations, like ours, SQL Server is very good in terms of reliability and security. It has the Always-On feature and many more features. I appreciate its reliability.

I don't know whether SQL Server can support large organizations where the database size is more than 100 GB. It might be because of SQL Server, or it might be because of the programming of the software vendor, but a lot of people think that it is a problem with SQL Server. It can't handle a large amount of data or large data size.

In terms of its usage, about 90% of our applications are running on the SQL Server database. We have around 1,600 users for our software, and all the applications are connected to the SQL Server database.

So far, we didn't ask for any technical support.

We used a flat-file database earlier, and since 2008, we have been using SQL Server. We started with SQL Server 2008 edition, and later on moved to 2012, 2014, and 2019.

We switched because there were many problems in the flat-file database. There was so much inconsistency. Some files were updated, and some files were not. There were big network issues. SQL Server has eliminated such issues, so either all transactions happen or nothing happens. This is a Relational Database Management System, and this is at another level compared to the flat-file database.

SQL Server is very user-friendly and very simple. It is very comfortable for us. We have been using it for a long time, so it is not a problem at all.

The deployment of our production server took less than 15 days.

It was done in-house with the help of our vendor. They have Microsoft-certified people. I have also worked on SQL Server for a long time, so we have an idea of how to migrate from one database to another. It was not a big issue for us.

At present, we have five people for its maintenance.

We are using licensed software for our environment. We have the Enterprise license, and we have a standard additional license.

As compared to Oracle Database, SQL Server is less expensive. For mid-sized organizations, SQL Server is completely all right, but people say it can't support large organizations with more than 2,000 users.

Before implementing SQL Server, you need to learn the concept, design, architecture, and data types of a relational database. You can learn it from YouTube. It is step-based, and you can install it. After that, you can migrate your existing SQL Server to the new SQL Server, depending on the size of the data, data architecture, and data type. 

I would rate it an eight out of 10 because I'm satisfied with SQL Server. It is working fine.

This client, specifically, is using it for Dynamics NAV. I don't know what they're calling it today. Microsoft changes the names all the time, 365 NAV Dynamics. This is ridiculous. We're using it for that, and we have more of a niche CRM database called Tour de Force. It's owned by a company called White Cup. They own a bunch of companies, and it sits on Microsoft SQL, as well.

One of the things I most like about SQL Server is the log shipping piece.

I have another client who uses GP, and they use Power BI to take the data out of the back end. I'm doing an IT assessment there, so I'm not really involved in that specifically, other than the fact this person has too many rights.

I have an auditing background, and I spent 25 years doing IT auditing as well. I understand I'm not a programmer, but I've been involved with enough of them. The log shipping really is one of the greatest features. It is not the only database you can do it in, but that was one of the better features of it because I am a backup nut. We use Veeam Backup and Replication to a local mass storage, but then we fully replicate everything in Veeam to another site with the exact same server set up at our other location. But I wasn't satisfied with that from a disaster recovery point of view. My IT company was, but I was not. I said, "I want to do SQL log shipping. I want to do an SQL backup and SQL log shipping and move it to Azure in the cloud," which is what we do every day. We have an hour by hour backup, in addition to our multiple nightly backups and our replication to our other site, and we've had to use it and it worked. This is a great feature.

Somebody who knows it would easily say, "No problem," because we set up our log shipping in about three hours. We sometimes have challenges with it in terms of timing, of getting it out, backing it up, and sending it to the cloud. There are always the glitches, but I get a daily report on what's going on. Around 30 backup jobs are running at all times, because it is a big company. It's a 200 person company.

In the next releases, I would only like more enhanced backups and more restore points. Data backup and cyber protection are the number one things everybody should be thinking about now. They may not be, but they should be. We're going to go to the Azure environment because that really is a duplicate of the on-premise environment, just somewhere else.

I would say that I have been directly involved in the ERP world for as long as I can remember, but SQL really didn't appear on my radar until the mid-90s. I know that early GP was out there. I believe it was on an earlier version of SQL. I use it heavily now because I'm the CIO. I'm a consultant, but I'm a CIO of a client for almost nine years, where we have two major databases sitting on SQL.

So I have always been involved in a Microsoft environment.

We are always deploying the latest version. I have multiple clients with SQL and Oracle. But my big client is always up to date.

Whether it is deployed on the cloud or on premises depends on the client. My big client is on-premise and we have a two year plan to move to the cloud.

In terms of scalability, I haven't seen any problems with it. We have 120 users. Every once in a while we get a record lock in our data. It's very rare though. Once every six months somebody hits the same record and same night. It's very rare. You go out for a minute, come back in, and it's over.

I don't have any Fortune 5,000, Fortune 2000, or Fortune 1000 companies. According to the governmental definition, they're small, they're SMB, but my big client is 200 million. To me, that's a lot of money-

But in the eyes of the government, they're still a medium company. I have clients with 1,000 people, but they're only a $50 million company. Those are not for profits. They're paying people 10 bucks an hour. It's very hard to categorize that if you're looking at it from a business perspective versus a technical perspective. I have a client with 1,000 people with 82 sites. So that's a technical challenge, but they don't have the same kind of money as the other people do.

It's a different way to categorize it.

Calling Microsoft is like calling Verizon. I wouldn't do that. I have a middleman that I work with. It's easier because they have more clout than do. I know that.

This client, the big client I've been talking about, had some ancient DOS system from the 70s when I got there in 2012. They had no data dictionary note. I think it was running on an early version of Unix on a Compaq machine. When I got there, it was 15 years old. The thing was still running until six months ago. You can't believe it. This thing wouldn't die. I tried to make it die multiple times, but we converted from that system onto Dynamics NAV.

It's a two year undertaking. The SQL was stable all the time, never had a problem with it.

In terms of the initial setup, you probably need to know what you're doing. I haven't seen any real laypeople get into the tables. I know it's possible to learn. Things like Power BI have made it easier, but if you don't know what the tables are you have to be a very methodical person to be able to do that stuff. We use a company called ArcherPoint for dynamics. They're one of the largest dynamics dealers in the country, and they have their stuff together. This woman I use there knows her stuff. She knows SQL very well, and my IT company also has a senior guy who they often talk to, and it always seems pretty straightforward, whatever they do. It's never a big install.

Usually a few hours and it's over.

This client has money, so I never hear any complaints. It seems reasonable to me. I think the biggest problem that Microsoft had back in the early 2000s was that the pricing of SQL was a nightmare. You could call five Microsoft people at Microsoft, and you'd get five different prices. Microsoft has a problem. Well, they have lots of problems. They characterize themselves as perfect.

From 40 years ago, I already knew well in advance of the clients that there is a security hole. I'm looking at Business Central, and somebody who has a global super admin of the tenant can get into the client's accounting system if they have full rights to their 365 email system. That's a big security gap. Their IT company shouldn't be in their financial system. Why would that be? I came up with the idea after talking to five different Microsoft people to just buy another tenant that they don't have access to and they said, "Oh, that works."

SQL Server is a good mainstream application that has been around for quite some time, and I like when things are around for a while. I don't like to be the first kid on the block. I remember when Power BI first came out. I waited a year and a half to use it.

The big thing for NAV was to get reports. We still use it, but we mostly abandoned it. It's really not working as well as I would've liked. And that reads SQL tables. While that was great, you had to trust the person who wrote it, that it would include all the data you needed. There's a big trust. We often found lots of problems with it, so we decided to just program all these reports inside the application. That worked really well. The thing I don't like is, I know a lot of people don't know about the backend security of SQL. They think others cannot get into their system and I tell them they can, they have the SA password. People are shocked. That's a hole that they should plug.

They should plug that and make that more apparent to people. When I did auditing, most clients had SQL based applications, and we'd always say, "Who's got the SA password," and they'd say, "What are you talking about?" Then we would tell them, and there is all this SQL injection stuff that used to happen. I haven't heard of any hacking through the back end in a while. Because you're talking about cybersecurity being so important now, people can hack in and get into the back end, although 99% of cyber is ransomware through email.

The risk is probably still low, but I try to close up all the gaps if I can. Clients don't know about this stuff. They don't even know enough to ask. I find a lot of IT people don't even think about stuff like that.

I'll ask a client if they back up their data and how often. If they talk to their IT guy? If they say, "Once a night," I ask, "Okay, what if it was the middle of the day and you go down? You lose all your data." I ask if they have ever heard of SQL log shipping. They start stuttering because they don't know how to set it up.

It would be great if Microsoft was more up-front about how to do that stuff. It's a great feature.

On a scale of one to ten, I would probably give SQL Server a nine. I don't give anybody a perfect score, certainly not in the technology world. Oracle is out there. NetSuite is just giving it away. You have a lot of other applications not running on SQL, like Intacct, who are creating proprietary, non-Microsoft things to come against what Microsoft is offering like interoperability with different applications. They are really pushing a different environment. I think Microsoft is going to win, but Sage is not a small company.

We have all these big titans fighting each other.