SQL Server Reviews

Despite the core database is not SQL Server in my working company, SQL Server is widely being used as the backend for many in-house applications and customized applications like Solarwinds.

Helping to effectively and efficiently manage the business-critical data

- There are hundreds of "Dynamic Management Views" (DMVs) & Dynamic Management Functions (DMFs) that are system views & system functions that return metadata of the system state and they provide valuable insight into the current SQL instance state. 

- Resumable online index rebuild 

- Table Partitioning and the Swap out to covert a Table Partition into a separate table.

- Python & R2 Integration, Graph Databases

- Automatic Database Tuning

- Very reliable Backup technology and many more

The price could be better:

Compare to Oracle it is cheaper but with the existence of many open source databases currently in the market, consider reducing the Licensing cost. Secondly, with the Core-based Licensing since SQL 2012 Version, the SQL Licensing price has substantially increased.

Postgres Extensions is a concept in Postgres to extend the Postgres features that are very useful for Performance Monitoring & Optimizations. Similarly option to extend the features as necessary.

I have been using SQL Server for 12 years.

It's been scalable since 2016. With each version, they are adding more features which are very helpful. 

On a rare occasion, I had contacted technical support about five or six years ago and only when I had a specific use case.

The GUI-based step-by-step initial setup is easier for the initial setup and even the Jr.DBAs can handle it with minimal training. The automated installation is possible with PowerShell Scripts and the Infrastructure Provisioning and Configurations tools like Ansible. We managed to automate the SQL installation using Ansible Playbooks and Gitlab to deploy Continous Integration and Continous Deployment.

We implemented this solution by ourselves.

CPU Core-based Licensing & Windows Licensing costs are additional overheads compare to open source databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Managed SQL Server Database Service in Azure is lagging with many features like Linked Server, DB Mail.

SQL Server deployment in the Cloud does not seem to be cost-effective with respect to the Licensing cost and average Life cycle of 5 years (I reiterate, this is in my opinion). 

If you take Postgre SQL and MySQL, they provide almost all the same features even though they are both open source databases.

I recommend this solution because you can engage in database manipulation, administration and manage almost all your requirements. When compared to Oracle licensing costs, SQL Server is better. 

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

The .NET applications use SQL Servers on a very large scale. Basically, about 80% or 90% of the database platform is on SQL Server.

We are working on version 2019, but we are also now working on the cloud databases. Our goal is to stay away from versions. We are going to go version-less and move to Azure SQL or managed instance, which is version-less. This way we won't need to worry about any upgrades or any version changes because Microsoft is going to take care of these things. We will always have the latest and greatest version.

It is a pretty good solution. The on-premise version 2019 has many features, and they had introduced a really good and stable environment in version 2019. It has very good integration with big data clusters and other things. It covers pretty much everything that you can do with a SQL server. You can use any language to connect to it, which is not there in other solutions. They have also introduced Python, and it also has ArcScale.

PaaS is a modern, scalable database. You can use Power Automate and a lot of features in this. It is very easy, and you don't have to worry about versions and upgrades.

Microsoft keeps on adding new features to this solution. Microsoft is improving its connectivity on an ongoing basis. It connects well with Office 365. If you see something not working, in a couple of weeks, it is going to work because there is a team working on it. You can vote for the things that are missing, and Microsoft can work on them depending on the product that they're launching. 

There are a lot of improvements in the cloud space about which we open a case with Microsoft every now and then. These improvements are not in terms of features or functionality. They are more related to their own compatibility or connectivity on which they keep on working to improve the product.

I have been using this solution for 13 to 14 years.

In version 2019, they introduced a really good and stable environment. Bugs are there, but bug fixes are provided by Microsoft. We have premium support with Microsoft. If we find a bug, they work on it and provide a solution.

It is very scalable, but its scalability also depends on what you're using. If it is on-premise, you have to do everything on your own to scale it out. It is easy, but you have to get the infrastructure ready to scale it out. It is a manual process. If you're on a cloud, then it is pretty much easy and straightforward if your cloud has those availabilities. It also has a Hyperscale, where you can put the upper and lower limit, and it can scale up and down as per the use case and the compute that you need.

We have a lot of users. Everyone is connected to this. We have business users, technical users, application users, and integration users. We have 17,000 instances of SQL Server here with a lot of databases. 

We use Microsoft's Premium Support. They're good. I would rate them an eight out of ten. For on-premise, you design your infrastructure. When you change something or customize a few things, it is hard to get support because the issue can be from either side. When you have a critical issue, which is not straightforward, you have to go between two different vendors, and they start finger-pointing to each other. They say that the issue is not at their end, and there is nothing wrong with their configuration. The issue is because of storage or network. These are the few things for which you have to fight for support. I don't know how they will improve this. It only happens sometimes for an on-premise solution. We don't run into those issues on the cloud because it is their own setup.

A cloud solution is pretty much on their site. They are managing the infrastructure, so they have to provide the solution, and they are good at it, but when you have on-premise, you decide what storage to use. Sometimes, you ignore Microsoft's recommendation, and you don't want to use what they are suggesting. When we run into issues on the DB side or the application side, they can point out to different vendors or causes for issues. 

We also have Oracle, Db2, and MongoDB databases here. We also have some NoSQL apps, but comparatively, SQL Server has a bigger footprint, and it is better than the others. 

Other systems are more complex to configure. When you configure a cluster on the SQL itself, it is easy to configure because you've got more resources, whereas, when you have to configure Oracle or Db2, you have to have a SPEC process because they have to configure that on Red Hat Linux or Unix side. A few companies don't have special admins for Linux because the footprint is not that big. You might have two or three applications running on that system. When you run into a problem, you need to hire someone who can implement it for you, whereas most of the companies, almost 80%, are Microsoft shops. They already have the talent and resources available. You also have offline help and support. You have a lot of blogs or online help available when it comes to Microsoft, but when you go to other solutions like Oracle, sometimes it is a challenge. You really need the right person there, and not everyone will be able to do it. 

The capability of a solution also depends on your needs and configuration. If you configure things wrong, any system will fail. When I'm testing something, I always believe in the functionality because Microsoft and Oracle test their products thoroughly. I never question their functionality, but we also check it according to our plan. You have to customize things based on your needs. If you're not getting the results, you have to consult the tech support and bring them in to configure it. These are the things that you run into when you are in your own data center. If you are not getting the throughput from the storage itself, you need to get the storage admin or storage vendor in there. When you move to the cloud, everything is taken care of.

It is straightforward. There is no complexity. It is all automated, and we do un-attended install. We are not sitting and doing it. We just include it with the server build itself. When the server is built, we provide them the un-attended scripts to run, and everything is configured. They can use the media provided by Microsoft. Everything is done in one step. We just need to do auditing. We need to check at the right place, and we just keep checking it.

Cost is a major derivative for any organization. It has a reasonable cost value, and its cloud support is also better than others. Comparatively, Oracle can do the same things or is even better in certain areas, but it is expensive. The cost along with the support are the plus factors for SQL Server.

You need to know the concepts and the business logic before using this solution. It is not straightforward. You need to know what your application needs are and only then you can work on it. You also need to know about the product and how it works.

I would probably advise others to move to the cloud version, which is a modern database. If you want to use SQL Server, Azure is the best because you get the hybrid benefits. You can bring your own license, and you can save costs. You can save 55% of the cost. With AWS, you have to buy your license, which makes it expensive. If you are using SQL Server and your company is more on the Microsoft side, Azure is easier, and there is no change in it. You can also get more out of it. You don't have to put a lot of complexity in supporting or administrating it because Microsoft does that for you behind the scenes. Therefore, it is good to move to Azure SQL or to manage instances where you have more control. Both of these are PaaS solutions. There is no need to go into IES. It is better to stay on-premise than on IES because it creates more complexity. This is because you still have to build the servers, and you have to still manage them. If your application is compatible to be used with PostgreSQL or MySQL, you can also move there.

It also depends on the kind of talent you have in your company. You have to consider the talent that you have. You can choose other technologies, but you need support from your teams. If they're .NET developers and you have to build the knowledge base, it is smoother to stay with SQL Server because you have to change less on the coding side.

I would rate SQL Server a ten out of ten.

There are certain shortcomings in the scalability of the product, making it an area where improvements are required.

From an improvement perspective, the price of the product needs to be reduced.

I have been using SQL Server for more than ten years. My company is a gold partner of Microsoft.

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a seven or eight out of ten.

It is quite a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

My company's clients who use the solution are mostly enterprise businesses.

I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

I am using Amazon Cognito for the first time in my company.

I rate the product's initial setup phase a seven to eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy.

The solution is deployed on the cloud and on-premises models.

The solution can be deployed in a few minutes.

The product is expensive.

In our company's daily operations, we use SQL Server for our enterprise applications.

Speaking about how SQL Server played a critical role in a recent project, I would say that in my company, we used it for full management since we had a three-tier architecture and an enterprise application.

SQL Server was beneficial for data management needs, considering the fact that it was used as a part of SSIS packages, which was helpful for importing the data from legacy software.

The performance of the solution was good.

Though I can't elaborate on the valuable security features, I can say that I did not face any security concerns when using the product.

In SQL Server, I manage data recovery and backup with the help of database mirroring.

I recommend the product to those who plan to use it since it is easy to use.

I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

I use SQL Server for my SharePoint environment.

It offers exceptional performance and robust stability, ensuring a highly secure environment.

The most valuable feature of SQL Server is that it is easy to set up.

There is room for improvement in terms of pricing for SQL Server.

I have been working with SQL Server for ten years.

I am working on the most updated version.

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten.

I plan to increase my usage in the future.

I would rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

The initial setup is straightforward.

It is easy to install.

There is a return on investment. The cost benefits are good.

The cost associated with SQL Servers is on the higher side.

While there are other options available such as Oracle Database, Firebird, and MySQL, we specifically chose SQL Server to fulfill our needs for Microsoft services.

We opted for SQL Server as our scalable server solution to meet the requirements of our Microsoft services.

It's a good solution.

I would rate SQL Server a nine out of ten.

We use the solution to provide the database layer for multiple applications.

We have been using this solution for 10+ years.

I have had issues with SQL Server but Microsoft support has been able to resolve them quickly and most came down to configuration/design errors and not a stability of the product issue.

SQL Server is quick to install < an hour.  Additional features increase the installation time.

The SQL Server pricing model is based on CPU cores that your database server utilises.

To others looking into using a SQL Server, I would say that it goes down to the application that you are developing and what funds you have available to run the total system.

We're primarily using the solution for our health record system.

The use of a solution with SQL Server has helped standardize how we import, store, and report data. It is a standard that many applications use so we are able to buy pre-made solutions instead of having to develop a solution and the data can be moved from application to application easily.

The solution comes at a more effective price than Oracle. 

It's a little bit more advanced than using MySQL or NoSQL.

It's more prevalent in the industry than SQL Postgre.

The initial setup is mostly straightforward.

The product is scalable. 

The stability has been mostly pretty good.

There is a lot of information about the solution readily available online.

Every time Microsoft comes out with a new version, they like to move everything around. Updates are a bit intrusive. For example, it used to be in a certain place and then they update it, and now I can't find it.

Technical support could be better. 

I have been using SQL Server since version 6.4. I have used it with several different companies and help upgrade several versions.

With the versions we have, the solution is quite stable. That's one of the reasons we don't immediately download the latest version. We wait a little bit before we go to the newest version. We want to make sure it's very stable beforehand.

The solution is very easy to scale. We have between 300 to 500 people that use it. 

Microsoft's tech support is really hard to use. I would rather look outside of Microsoft for solutions. When needed we usually pay the one-time fee but only in rare instances where a deep dive is needed to isolate the issue.

Positive

SQL's been the main solution for this company. I have, however, used Oracle in the past with other companies.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

It can be complex depending on what you're trying to do, however, it has a good user base and user support groups, so there's lots of information. If you're trying to do something, likely somebody else has already done it, and you can usually find that information through a user group or a forum, or even on YouTube or Google.

Implementation was a joint effort with our team and the vendor team. Most of the vendor team was India based and was very low-level for best practices and security. We had to clean up a bunch of their generic implementations and correct code.

That is a complex question since there are too many variables that are outside the range of IT to answer.

The pricing is pretty decent. It's less expensive than Oracle. 

While the solution started out really reasonable, it's gotten a little bit more pricey, as Microsoft keeps changing how they want to license it.

Whether you're using it in the cloud or on-premise changes the costs involved. A lot of times it might be more cost-effective to do it in the cloud. Microsoft includes a lot of the licensing in the cloud.

The evaluation was based more on the applications and the solution that the business unit wanted to use which are easier to support if they all use the same database structure. The most common was SQL Server.

We're just a customer and end-user.

We're not using the latest version. We're probably one or two versions behind.

I'd advise new users that you want to know what you're going to use it for. I would say it's more suited to a more midsize or larger company than a mom-and-pop shop - unless they're tying it to some software that uses SQL.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

It has all of our data. Our company sells contracts when you buy a car. We sell aftermarket insurance for the tyre, wheel, ding, dent, windshield, etc. When somebody buys a contract, we capture all of that data into a legacy database PostgreSQL, and my task is to incorporate that into our financial platform using T-SQL. So, I write queries, procedures, and views. I use SSIS, and I use SSRS. My job is to get the data into our financial system so that we can process claims, payments, cancellations, and refunds. 

In terms of its version, we're up-to-date. We have version 2019.

This is the heart of the whole company. SQL Server is where all of our financials are. It has all of our data.

I've been using SQL Server for 20 years, and there is nothing that it can't do. It is awesome.

When we are talking about event space architecture, scalability generally comes into play. For example, I might have a hundred thousand transactions a second, and then all of a sudden, I build something that everybody in the world wants. The next thing I know is that I have a million transactions a second. So, to be able to process the throughput, I'd have to scale up, and then when the holidays are over, I'm again down to a hundred thousand transactions, and I want to scale back down. SQL Server is not going to do that. In this way, it is not very scalable. One of the reasons why they want us to use Kafka is so that if we need to, we can do that, but our base program is on SQL Server. So, this is where we would use a Kafka event stack so that if I need more servers, I can just write a command, and I can have more consumers, more brokers, and more producers, and when the holiday season is over, it scales right back down again. SQL Server is not going to do that.

I have been using this solution for 20 years.

We do clustering. If one SQL Server goes down, it automatically goes to another one.

I don't ever need tech support. If it breaks, I can just rebuild it.

They're now using a different database for contracting called Road Runner. I don't know what that is, and how it stores data. I don't know anything about it. 

There is also Postgres. I like SQL Server more than Postgres. That's only because I know SQL Server. I don't know Postgres as well. So, I can't say which one is better because I don't have the same amount of experience in both.

I can bring up a SQL Server in an hour or so and set it up.

In terms of maintenance, the number of people required depends on the need. 
We have a team of DBAs, developers, and UA analysts. We probably have 40 people in our IT area who are maintaining our solution. I'm just the developer. I'm the guy who makes the magic happen, but without other people collecting the information that I need to make the magic happen, I'm stuck. Without the guy who is an expert in permissions, partitioning, and performance tuning, I'm stuck. So, it's definitely a team effort. You can do it all, but you don't want to do it all because then you're running your head off, and you don't really get good at anything. It would be a jack of all trades, master of none type of scenario.

You will seldom find a database that was designed correctly. Just because you got a poor-quality database doesn't mean that you're going to get a better database anywhere else. You rarely get to build a thing on your own. Usually, you inherit somebody else's stuff. So, the challenging thing is working with what you have while trying to implement a better solution. My only advice is to be patient.

I would rate it a nine out of 10. I wouldn't give anything a 10 because I don't have that kind of knowledge, but right now, it does what I need it to do.

We developed a product for banks and we store the data in SQL Server.

SQL Server has good performance, but it could be better.

I have been using SQL Server for a couple of years.

The stability of SQL Server is very important for us because we provide services for banks. The banks need a secure and stable solution from us and we have requested from the cloud provider to give us this level of service.

We have approximately 10 developers and architects using SQL Server. Additionally, we have approximately four end-users using the solution.

The support from Microsoft has been good.

I have previously used Oracle.

The initial setup of SQL Server is not complicated. 

We have four technicians that do the implementation and maintenance of the solution.

There is a license required to use the solution and I am satisfied.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate SQL Server a seven out of ten.