SQL Server Reviews

We use this Relational Database Management System for Line of Business systems, including Enterprise Resource Planning, Data Warehouse, Web Applications, and Business Intelligence.

Solutions are procured, built, and enhanced in the REIT industry, FMCG ERP, distribution and warehousing, manufacturing systems, knowledge workers such as workflow and portals, web applications, custom developments areas, enterprise reporting and analytics for internal reporting, and decision support systems.

Integration solutions provide robust integration to various and disparate third-party systems.

This is a simple to deploy, own, and manage RDMS.

Skills and support for this product are widely available. The security and vulnerability management are well-managed through the vendor. Lifecycles are greatly improved in recent releases, to make upgrades easier.

A license buys enterprise-grade data integration, reporting, and analytical capabilities as well.

It has broad adoption and support for integration with leading software brands such as SAP and Sage.

Data availability and security is well taken care of for the enterprise and is the backbone of first-class business continuity plans.

Support and adoption are important because skills are available to lower the total cost of ownership. 

High availability, read-only copy synchronization, and data integrity mean that it is relatively easy to ensure data security, availability, and integrity. Lower tier SKUs offer high-end features.

Data integration is available, as SSIS offers a flexible data integration platform with rich features including .NET integration for web-service integration, or bus architectures.

SSAS analytical DBs are powerful yet easy to develop and own.

SSRS offers enterprise reporting that is reasonably user-friendly.

It is easy to deploy cloud/on-premises hybrid implementations with a familiar and consistent toolset.

It is costly to implement high throughput systems, beyond millions of transactions per second. The hardware to run the systems, especially for high availability deployments is expensive, i.e. more resources to run.

Linux-based editions are not yet proven to be on par with Windows deployments.

Row-level security is obscure to implement.

Running cloud offerings are expensive; for example, the Instance as a Service offering.

Third-party tooling is required to manage code version control.

Managing BLOB data is not equally simple to implement.

The engine that implements query plans was updated in the 2012/2014 refresh that could necessitate a costly rewrite of queries.

I have been working with SQL Server for 21 years.

I have a very high opinion of the stability of the solution. It is one of the most mature products available.

Best practice setup is important to consider but when implemented correctly, it just runs.

The vendor is excellent and their relationship with Microsoft has proven invaluable. The 2008 > 2012 and 2012 > 2014 upgrades had specific issues that made them costly. Recent upgrades have been relatively painless.

We have tried using different technologies, depending on the use case. This is not the best tool for document-oriented or unstructured data.

It is relatively simple to run. We spent a good amount of time preparing the requirements for a high-availability cluster that paved the way for a reasonably straightforward implementation.

We had assistance from our vendor. We consider our vendor nimble and best in class. They contributed greatly to the stable running of the platform.

It is a positive ROI, especially in that we leverage many of the features in the offering.

With recent releases, the Standard Edition (cheaper) SKU has some of the earlier version Enterprise features. SQL Express has some limitations.

The Azure Platform as a Service option remains relatively expensive, at least in South Africa, compared to on-premises, but it is worth exploring.

Some baseline comparisons were made around 2012 to Oracle, with MS SQL Server coming out to have a lower total cost of ownership.

It is a first-class enterprise RDBMS and will continue to enjoy favourable sentiment from developers and DBAs.

We use SQL Server for our application data.

As a government agency, all of our data is stored in our environment on-premises.

SQL Server is easier to use than Oracle, programming-wise.

It is the latest technology and pretty powerful in terms of the high availability of the virtual server.

We have had problems implementing a data warehouse using SQL Server. It may be because the data is too big, although it claims to be able to handle the amount of data that we have. Perhaps there are some technical issues because there is something weird going on. It cannot find the correct IP address.

I have been using SQL Server for ten years.

This product is not quite as stable as Oracle. I would rate the stability as moderate and would not rate it ten out of ten.

SQL Server claims to be good, scalability-wise, but we have had issues with it.

On the other hand, we have been using it for a lot of large applications and it has worked well in those cases. For the most part, it is good, and we have a lot of users.

Microsoft technical support is good.

I also have experience with Oracle and I find that SQL Server is easier to work with, but it is not as powerful.

Initially, it is easy to set up.

My advice for anybody who is considering this product is that it is relatively easy to set up.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

In the current organisation there was no centralised data repository. Thus, statistics, reporting, and generic management information were not existent. With the introduction of SQL Server, we have consolidated relevant business data into one main repository. We built reporting structures and analytics on top of the repository to help analysts and teams manage themselves, as well as provide management information. From basic or incomplete reports and statistics, we moved to a full reporting data structure, providing a holistic view of the organisation's data.

Without any doubt the Integration Services and Analysis Services are the most widely used. These are the basis for data quality, data gathering, ETL process, as well as collation for the data warehouse, Cube-generation, and ad-hoc processes. The ease in which you may mold a process flow or even modularly add in new structures is something which is much needed in my job.

An area that definitely needs improvement is the Reporting Service side with the actual report server. Although to be fair, Microsoft has developed a new branch of tools for reporting; presumably that is why they have not improved the Reporting Service side. Nevertheless, if this was not the case then, yes, it would be an area for improvement. Another area would be the SQL Server process monitoring, which is quite basic and could sustain more information.

Overall, SQL Server 2014 is a very stable product and so far I cannot remember major issues that I have encountered. The only item which I can list is application failure during Integration Services debugging, when restarting a process flow. In a number of instances the solutions fails. I have not given this much thought and simply stop and start the debugging service rather than restarting.

So far, we have had no scalability issues. I have read about instances where people encounter issues online, but fortunately enough I have never encountered issues.

Yes, in the past I have worked with different versions of SQL server and have switched due to upgrades to utilise the latest version. I have also used Oracle, Tableau, SAP, and Jaspersoft.

The main reason I went for SQL Server is because it felt easier and more adaptive. Also, most of the products we use within the organisation are Microsoft-based, so that provided an extra advantage over the rest.

Not too complex. We had spent a number of months on the design and planning stages, deciding how we would go about the setup, security, and accessibility aspects, so that when it came time for the actual setup, the process looked pretty straightforward. Don't get me wrong, it still took a number of days to finalise, but we had a concrete plan of action, the steps needed, and the work was delegated accordingly.

My advice is quite straightforward. If you know the number of users who really and truly need access to the Server then it is a no-brainer. If you do not know, then get the basic package and minimum licenses and start from there. Needless to say, users can develop/use data structures outside and then deploy onto the Server.

Within the current organisation, we did not look at other options. I was pretty confident that the product would do the job, based on my previous experience with similar products. One key factor which pushed us to choose SQL Server was the cost of the product versus the amount of work to develop/maintain.

I rate it eight out of 10. It is quite a good product and has improved dramatically. Like all products, it has bugs here and there and some areas still need improvement.

I have been using the solution for the past two and half years, however, I have worked with older versions of SQL Server (2012, 2008, 2005). The solution is quite powerful and versatile and I have not yet used all the areas/modules of the solution. It is not always easy to utilise all the available modules for the solution, especially if your work is focused solely on a particular area. Nonetheless, I try to use different areas for side projects.

Plan thoroughly before, and once implemented go through the structure regularly and remodel accordingly. When planning, go through all the various sections, resources, accessibility, security etc.

Performance-wise, SQL cannot handle large amounts of data. In the next release, I would like them to commission SQL Server on Linux, as has been announced in the past but has not yet happened.

I've been using SQL Server for thirteen to fourteen years.

SQL is a highly unstable server - there are patch updates on the Windows server every week, which is why we only use it for non-critical systems. 

The initial setup was very easy - much, much easier than Oracle - and took about a day to complete. Microsoft is less demanding because everything is GUI, unlike Oracle, where you need to use command lines.

This is a very cheap product.

SQL's performance is good enough if you have a low amount of data. For those looking into implementing SQL Server, I would advise first analyzing your requirements and whether your system is critical or non-critical. If it is non-critical, go for SQL as it will save you in terms of cost, but if it is critical, avoid SQL as it will bring you down in one day. I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.

This is the main database for our financial system. I'm the IT manager and we are customers of SQL server. 

We've been using this solution for many years.

We're satisfied with the stability.

We have around 100 users. The database isn't used directly, so users are not even aware that there is a SQL Server underneath. 

There are some local companies that have direct relations with Microsoft. We use them regularly when we need some support.

I don't recall, it's been many years since we implemented this product. 

We pay a license fee, it could always be cheaper.

I recommend this solution and rate it 10 out of 10. 

We primarily use the product for internally developed applications. There's some business intelligence and data warehousing used as well as some financial information.

It's evolved over the years. It's become a truly useful enterprise situation and an enterprise tool. The amount of data that it can contain is significant.

The ease of administration, in general, is the solution's most valuable aspect.

You can make the solution work pretty fast. Performance isn't an issue.

The initial setup is quick and easy.

The solution is stable.

The scalability is good. 

Its ability to handle certain kinds of large data could be improved. Its high availability, segmentation, and disaster recovery features can be improved upon also.

There are not really any significant features that I'd like to see added to it.

I've been using the solution for a long time. It's been 25 to 30 years at this point. 

The solution offers very good performance and is pretty reliable. 

The stability is excellent. There are no bugs or glitches. it doesn't crash or freeze.

The solution scales pretty well. I would rate it at a four out of five. If a company needs to expand, it shouldn't be an issue. 

It's used pretty extensively by a lot of people in our organization. It's used for everything from management to clerks and external users. Clients use it in some way, shape, or form.

I've used technical support in the past and I would rate them as average. They aren't bad. 

I've also used Oracle and MySQL in the past. This company hasn't switched. I've just used other solutions in various roles over the years. We have Oracle in place for our financials still. There's no need for my SQL and Postgres. They're open-source tools.

The initial setup is very straightforward and the deployment is quick. You can have it up and running in three minutes. It's not a problem to get it set up.

You only need one person to handle any maintenance tasks on it. 

We handled the entire deployment in-house. We did not need an integrator or consultant to assist us.

The licensing cost varies widely, depending upon what methodology you employ. It could be very cheap, for example, it could be less than $2,000. Alternatively, it can go up to well over $100,000.

I'm a customer and an end-user.

I'm currently using the most recent version of the solution. 

I'd advise those who wish to use the solution to first practice a bit with it.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. It's a very solid product. It's very stable. The ease of use is pretty high and the amount of support that's freely available for it is significant.

I love the developer version. Microsoft tells you about all the cool things they provided for everybody. You can develop and do anything with it. It's really good to learn. Oracle will not give you that much freedom, and Microsoft really kills it. 

You don't do anything with it but develop, learn, break, and push it to its limits. If there are problems, you show Microsoft or ask them, "what's going on here?" There is good community support for the developer edition, and that's what I really appreciate. You can teach people about it without limitations. You can have small databases created. You can keep it for a year and then work on it. It's a good thing for learners and developers.

The price could be better. It costs a lot, and competing databases like Postgres are free.

I have been using SQL Server for about ten years.

There are problems in all systems, and I don't see any difference between open source and proprietary solutions. SQL Server, Postgres, and Oracle are all vulnerable. There are no known issues per se, but any system can be broken. There is nothing special about this database.

SQL Servers and other databases are all scalable. I just don't see any problem with scalability.

Whenever we have issues, we talk directly with Microsoft. They are responsive, and they help.

I'm more into open source solutions, and I love Postgres. I've worked as a database administrator as well. But I really hate all the tools used to manage performance or backup or just any of those disaster, recovery, and availability solutions. I hate them. They really impose a lot of overhead in a demonstration and aren't really flexible. When you're in the cloud, you don't have to worry about most of those things. 

Some of them still exist, but the cloud providers do provide them and you stick to that. You enhance them or add some more features, but really the most hated feature is, making sure that your database really can recover from many kinds of disasters. Resiliency, the most important part and when that is really managed by the cloud online, the overhead costs  are removed. The rest is really easy. Performance is okay, and there are indicated spots for data because I work with financial data and a lot of it is our important critical data. So, the cloud is really the best thing that happened to us.

When it comes to the initial setup, most of them can be automated. For example, most setup settings for progressions, management, disaster and recovery, failover, and failback. Most of those things can be automated and provisioned into one kind of pipeline. Connecting that data to an application and even provisioning from the code repository through Jenkins. Those things are really easy to automate.

It costs a lot.

I would advise potential users to use SQL Server with Microsoft Azure. I don't recommend managing it locally.

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

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.