SQL Server Reviews

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'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.

We provide support services to clients. We find that some of our clients are running the latest system while others are still on Windows 2016, others are moving to 2019. Some other clients take time to upgrade. If I interact with five clients, I'll basically be in five different environments.

Our use case for the SQL Server is for transaction processing. We store all the transactions that occur. For example, if you now purchase something from the point of sale, all the information about the good you are purchasing gets stored on the SQL Server. 

When you perform a transaction that information is stored at the bank that owns the point of sale and perhaps even your bank, where your money is will be stored in a SQL Server.

All the people in all of the organizations, which are involved in the process use SQL Server.

If your transaction goes through my server, I store part of the transaction there, and if I have to route that transaction to Visa or Mastercard, they have their own SQL Server, and they also store the transaction up until you get receive your goods at the particular merchant. Almost everyone in that transaction stores the information on their respective Microsoft SQL server.

The most valuable feature would most likely be querying. We query a lot, we use a lot of stored procedures. As for other features, such as replication and all other more fancy features we don't use them the most. I do not know, but perhaps the DBAs would be the best people who know of the features that they use, but as far as how I use it, it's just for querying and running stored procedures. We use the bare minimum features.

We do not know all the features of SQL Server.

If SQL Server could perhaps run on Linux, that would be good. Most of us prefer Linux and I've used a lot of Linux. I understand that SQL Server is quite powerful, but I'm not sure if the functionality is there, but if it could be used in an open-source type of environment, it would be very good.

I have been using SQL Server for approximately 10 years.

SQL Server is stable and is a high-performance database. We do hundreds of transactions per second, it's fairly robust, it does not struggle. Mostly, if your hardware is strong enough and you've set it up properly, then you can actually perform a lot of transactions per second on a SQL Serving installation.

The scalability of SQL Server is relatively easy. if you are in a Microsoft environment, then I think that it relatively it should not be that difficult. However, I haven't been on a project whereby we have had to scale.

SQL Server is suitable for all companies in my experience, ranging from small to large enterprises businesses.

I have not dealt much with technical support, because most of the time when we have issues, we go online. If it's a Microsoft issue, then we go and read up what that issue is. If there's an error, then there are places on the Microsoft support system where we are able to enter in the error code and it is able to tell you why you have that problem. As far as dealing or interacting with people or technical support from Microsoft, I have not done that.

I use MySQL and when comparing the solutions I have found the SQL Server is much more professional, and it's quite big and robust. MySQL is a community of people who are contributing to a project and you have to hack them in order for it to work. But it is quite good as well.

The installation is straightforward and not complex. However, it depends on some of the features that you may want to use. I think it is simply because you only need to tick whatever functionalities you want to use and the ones that you don't need to use, you don't select them.

Most of the time we are doing the implementation from scratch. If it's a big bank, then they would normally have dedicated people who deal with SQL. However, it depends on the customer.

There is some maintenance that is required, such as updates and tuning. We need to find ways of filling up the data so that it doesn't get stale but normally with regular updates, you should be fine.

I cannot comment on the price because I find that the organization already has a license when I arrived. I have not had a sneak peek at the price. When you join an organization, they tell you we are using the 2018 version and that someone purchased it. I don't know who purchased it, I'm not privy to that kind of information.

My advice to companies that are wanting to implement the solution is they have to make sure that they've have a proper skillset. When you have the proper skillset or people who are certified it would make for a better investment into the product. When you are certified, then you know the system in and out and you should be able to have the best implementation for the type of business you have.

I rate SQL Server an eight out of ten.

We use SQL Server as a database solution.

The performance of the SQL Server is very good.

I have been using SQL Server for a few years.

The stability is very good.

The solution is scalable. However, we do not have many large servers using SQL Server anymore, we have moved to SAP HANA.

We have approximately 2,000 users using this solution in my organization.

The support offered by Microsoft is very good. We have not faced any issues with SQL Server to need to contact their support.

We use SAP HANA as a database solution for certain use cases.

We have technical managers and engineers that do the maintenance and support for this solution.

We are on an annual enterprise license for the solution and the cost of the license could be reduced.

I rate SQL Server an eight out of ten.

Usually, we use a lot of the vendor software, like ManageEngine, and stuff like that. They use Postgres, however, I prefer to use Microsoft's SQL server. We have a couple of servers and we integrate that information into it. I can run reporting and analysis off of that.

There's a lot of great features. I like T-SQL, which is wonderful. The backups are excellent. There's a lot of things that are much easier to manage. All of the features and functions within the SQL language itself, the store procedures, I really, really enjoy. The security has been excellent.

The initial setup is very straightforward. 

The stability is very good.

We find it easy to scale if we need to.

I would like to see better integration between their link server and other platforms, such as IBM, due to the fact that, a lot of times, you want to set up a linked server so you can be on SQL and pull data off of another server using that link server. Sometimes they don't play well together. There just needs to be better integration for those types of situations.

I've been using the solution for about eight or nine years at this point. 

The stability is great. There are no bugs or glitches. it doesn't crash or freeze. It's very reliable. The performance is great. 

Scaling is easy if you need to do it. You simply set up a cluster and you can just grow it up.

In our organization, all the end-users are pretty much integrated into it and using it. As far as developers, there are two developers and me that are using it.

We haven't used tech support as we used to have a business partner that wanted us to talk to them instead. Therefore, I can't speak to how helpful or responsive they would be if you need assistance. 

Here at the company, they used Postgres, and what I didn't care about it was that it was okay, but it didn't integrate with a lot of the other applications. I felt Microsoft did a better job of that.

The setup is pretty straightforward. The only thing that sometimes gets weird is if you have somebody that's needing an ODBC driver from another type of application back to the SQL server. It's usually that other application trying to figure out what it needs to connect to SQL. It's not really SQL's fault.

We are customers and end-users.

We are using both the latest version and a previous version of the solution. I don't have the exact version numbers on hand. 

I would advise new users first to get help implementing it unless you know the solution well, as there's so much that it can do. A lot of times you can actually make a little mistake. Say if you're going to go in a certain direction, if you get some advice, you may be much happier going in another direction completely.

In general, I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten. I've been quite satisfied with its capabilities. It's an excellent product that still has room for growth.

The solution is an RDBMS and can be used to simplify customers' requirements for a back-end database. The main function of the solution is to store information from front-end users.

The most valuable feature of the solution, compared to other RDBMS solutions, such as Oracle MySQL or IBM DB2, it is more user-friendly and has backward compatibility. For example, if you have an application that requires an old version of SQL Server and you have the latest version of the license, you are able to install and use it in backward compatibility mode. They keep supporting the existing legacy application. Additionally, the solution is simple and if it is configured properly it performs very well. 

I have used the solution for approximately six years.

I find the solution to be very stable. 

The solution is scalable. 

The technical support is only provided to the customers having a subscription-based license with a Software Assurance server. For other forms of licensing the solution will not provide support. 

I have previously used other RDBMS solutions, such as Oracle MySQL, Maria DB, PostgreSQL, and IBM DB2.

When comparing PostgreSQL, Oracle MySQL, and Microsoft SQL, Microsoft SQL has an advantage over the other two server databases because it provides a graphical user interface by default.

The initial setup of the solution is very easy and the time it takes depends on the architecture required. If the deployment of a cluster is required then the setup may take up to three hours, whereas standard environment deployment needs half an hour. 

The solution can be installed by our selves but the use of an integrator makes it much easier. 

The solution requires authorization in either the form of perpetual licensing or subscription-based licenses for two years. If a perpetual license version is purchased then customers have it to the end of life, whereas a subscription-based called server with Software Assurance, has to be renewed every two years. 

The areas that need improvement are with regards to the commercial aspect of the solution, the licensing cost could be reduced in order to help customers to adopt it.

I would recommend this solution. However, the customer has to make sure it fits their use case.

I rate SQL Server a nine out of ten. 

We're using it for our on-premise servers, and we have the latest version of SQL Server.  

We use SQL Server for the database for Microsoft Navision. We also use it for the Track-It application that helps users in logging in their IT requests. We also manage all the IT inventory through Track-It. It does automatic auditing and traces online IT equipment.

We have end-computing devices with a server-client type of model. We have a server. All terminals are dumb terminals, but they get connectivity from SQL Server, and it has worked really well. We operate in difficult locations, such as Mombasa in Kenya and Mozambique in Maputo, where power is a big problem. Instead of desktop computers, we went for thin end-computing clients, and it worked really well with SQL Server.

It is a stable product, and it runs seamlessly. It is not complex.

It has been there for a long time, and they are doing whatever bug fixes they have to do. 

They have too many licensing options. They may want to simplify its licensing and bring it down to two, three, or four categories from ten to fifteen categories. Having so many different licensing options makes it difficult to decide which one to choose from. They can club things together. This is an area where they can make things easier for customers.

I have been using SQL Server for ten years.

It is a stable product.

It has pretty good scalability. In terms of usage, we have two different types of usage. For end-computing usage, we have about 600 or 700 students who use the media labs. For Microsoft Navision and Track-It, we have about 100 staff members as users. 

It is being used fairly extensively. Microsoft Navision is one of the core solutions of our business, and it is used on a daily basis. End computing is used by students. Because of the pandemic, for the last 14 months, everything is closed, and everybody is remote, so end computing has not been used, but Navision continued to be used. After the school reopens in each location, we will continue to use it even more. We definitely have plans for expansion.

Their response is fast.

Its initial setup is very straightforward. In case there is an issue, Microsoft's tech support people come online and help you.

For its deployment and maintenance, two people are required at each location. We have one database specialist and one IT service delivery engineer with networking knowledge.

It comes with the bundle package that we have. We have Microsoft Volume Licensing, so we don't have to pay for it separately. It is a part of the package.

I would definitely recommend this solution. I have nothing to complain about.

I would rate SQL Server a nine out of ten. 

We are primarily using the solution for pulling data and analysis.

In the auto industry, are the dealer management systems for which there is kind of portals from which the dealers are maintaining information can have access to retail data, bookings, and details surrounding individual customers.

We are fetching data and using it for analytics purposes, basically.

The basic features of the solution are excellent overall.

The initial setup isn't overly complex.

The pricing is reasonable.

The solution scales well.

The solutions very fast. It reads and writes six to eight times faster than any other tool.

The solution is very different from Oracle, which is a product we also use.

Mainly the data capacity needs to be improved. The data values are limited. They are smaller or medium scale. The MySQL is working fine, however, when it comes to large data sets or large data volumes, Oracle can handle them better. The backup capacity needs to be bigger.

When it's medium or small-scale data volume, people are referring to MySQL, however, when the data volume grows the people are referring to Oracle. In my estimation, the stability is fine.

The scalability of the product is pretty good. It can scale effectively and expands better than other options.

We have around 40 users on the solution currently.

Our main usage is not for the database and we simply use basic aspects of the platform.

Technical support isn't an aspect of the solution I know too much about. I've never been in direct contact with them. Therefore, I can't speak to how helpful or responsive they are. 

We also currently use Oracle. 

The initial setup isn't too complex or difficult. It's pretty straightforward. It's less complex of a process as compared to other solutions.

The cost isn't overly expensive. It's very reasonable. Our customers are happy with the price. It's in a good range.

We are partners with Microsoft. We use multiple deployment models, and typically those are private cloud or on-premises options.

Overall, I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten. We've been mostly very satisfied with the capabilities of the product. It's fast. It's our preferred product.

I'd recommend the solution to other users and organizations.