SQL Server Reviews

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.

We use the latest version.

Most SQL Server applications come with package applications from the shelf. This means that when one buys an application, most of these applications work with SQL Server as a basis. They add SQL Server as a database to applications which come with it that one buys. As such, I don't see many people developing new applications with SQL server.

A valuable feature of the solution is that it is comparatively simpler to manage than Oracle. Now that the Linux version is an option, this can be taken into consideration, since Windows limited one's use to things which could only be done in Windows. 

Database support could be improved. Oracle provides better support. 

While the price of the solution is comparatively cheaper, people are paying to Microsoft, in any event, for other things that they're using. 

Thoughs the licensing cost could be cheaper, this depends, as there is nobody who only uses the database with Microsoft. Every company has Windows, Office, Active Directory and all the security features of Microsoft. This means that, overall, when one buys these licenses together, he also gets the database. The focus is not on the price of the database, but what is actually being paid to Microsoft. 

The licensing price could be better, more user-friendly. Things should be be moved from the enterprise to the standard edition. 

As with Oracle, we have been using SQL Server for a long time. They actually have the same shelf life. We have been using the solution for around 30 years. 

The support does not reflect how Microsoft used to be. It can depend. Oracle has a much more sophisticated database, so it comes with expanded support. There are many solutions which come out of the box, as all the problems which could arise have already been encountered by the customers. This is why they are building a big data, to have a ready answer for any issue which may arise, the answer being very quick and straightforward. 

When it comes to Microsoft, noone delves deep, so such problems as those arising with Oracle are not encountered. Oracle is much more sophisticated and comes with many problems. This is why the solution comes with better support, as they have already provided a foundation for many of the solutions.

We did not use a solution prior to SQL Server, with the exception of, maybe, Access. 

The installation is good. 

It took very little time, a couple hours. 

Installation can be done on one's own. Everything can be done sequentially, from one thing to the next. 

While the price of the solution is comparatively cheaper, people are paying to Microsoft in any event for other things that they're using.

Although the licensing cost could be cheaper, this depends, as there is nobody who only uses the database with Microsoft. Every company has Windows, Office, Active Directory and all the security features of Microsoft. This means that, overall, when one buys these licenses together, he also gets the database. The focus is not on the price of the database, but what is actually being paid to Microsoft.

The licensing price could be better, more user-friendly. Things should be moved from the enterprise to the standard edition.

Microsoft is fine. They have done a good job.

As everyone has a station with Microsoft installed, everybody is making use of it. When it comes to the database, this depends on the application. As I said, we are talking about a package solution, so use of the same application could consist of several hundred people or thousands. 

I rate SQL Server as a nine out of ten. 

SQL Server can be useful for a lot of businesses and enterprise solutions. SQL Server is very powerful and useful when you need to store, retrieve, process, and analyze a large amount of data. In my organization, almost everyone uses SQL Server. That's about 10 people using it.

SQL Server's Management Studio is very user-friendly. I like their database and the additional features it offers. It's also easy to integrate SQL Server with things like CLR, PowerShell, and command shell

I would like to see SQL Server add the ability to write to multiple sites or support replication between multiple sites at the transaction level. If we can have data available on multiple sites as quickly as possible, that would be a great feature.

I've been using SQL Server for around 10 years. I have 30 years of experience in the IT industry. In that time, I have worked on different kinds of databases, such as Oracle. Before that, I worked on FoxPro. I have also worked with PostgreSQL.

It's absolutely scalable. 

Our clients are the end-users of the SQL Server applications, and we do all the development and maintenance for them. So anything related to support, our clients take care of it.

I work on the development and performance-tuning side, so I don't do the installation but my guess would be that it is pretty straightforward by now. 

I am not aware of the cost because our clients take care of them, but I think there are enterprise licenses. If you go for Azure Cloud databases, then you just can pay as you go.

SQL Server is my favorite database. Because I've been working on it for so many years, I like it. I have only good things to say about it. I would rate SQL Server nine out of 10.

We do data warehousing, and our clients are mainly large commercial Insurance providers in the United States.

It's easy to use and fairly intuitive. I do development and data analysis, so we do a lot of work with SSIS and SQL Job Scheduler. Deploying new databases is very simple with things like BACPAC. You don't have to do all the scripting for the database, then all the tables, keys, etc. It takes all that out of your hands.

One thing I don't like about SQL Server is the way they've set up security with users and groups. It just doesn't seem that intuitive to me. Adding some more explanatory information might help some. Sometimes the documentation is a little thin, but the same could be said about a lot of products.

I've been using SQL Server on and off since it first came out in the 1990s. Most of the people I've worked for are SQL Server shops.

I can't really speak intelligently about that because I haven't been on any of the real big ones yet. 

The complexity of the initial setup really depends. Obviously, you're going to need to know a few things and there are different ways to do deployments. I like the BACPAC, which is one of the features that come with SQL Server. It's a nice feature to deploy. BACPAC really handles all of the configuration for you. If you use that, I don't think you really need to know too much. If we're talking about a small database that holds a few thousand records, it doesn't matter what you're doing. You can't make a mistake because it's just not big enough.  

We do a lot of Azure-based on-demand type systems where we host the system or we host it in Azure. We do the work for them. So we don't really do a lot of those installs.

We're going a lot heavier into Azure and we're going to be dealing with lots of volume because insurance data is pretty voluminous. I think some of our clients don't like the idea of having one gigantic VM system to run the database. That's one reason why they're switching to Snowflake. We had to do some SSRS stuff in the past, and I think they're moving over to Power BI mostly.

I'd probably rate SQL Server nine out of 10. I don't think I'd give anybody a 10, but I think nine's about the best I can do. In my experience, it's been reliable and easy to use.

We use SQL Server as a relational database mostly for the application backend activities and integrations.

The SQL Server is low maintenance, it does not require advanced technical skills to maintain or use it as you might in other similar database solutions. You need some knowledge on how to access the solution and how to query it but it is fairly straightforward.

SQL Server could improve by enhancing the integration abilities, adding more inbuilt data security features, and simplifying the maintenance.

I have been using SQL Server for approximately 10 years.

SQL Server is stable.

The solution is scalable and flexible.

We have approximately 15 people using the solution in my organization.

The technical support from Microsoft is good but we have learned and received the most help from the online community.

The installation difficulty level depends on the use case and environment. For example, if you need to deploy it on multiple nodes or have large amounts of storage it could increase the difficulty level. 

We have a team of approximately five database administrators and application developers who handle the setup and maintenance of the solution.

There is a license required for the use of SQL Server and we are on an annual subscription.

I rate SQL Server a nine out of ten.

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.

We have hundreds of databases that are using SEL Server and there may be other capabilities.

It's a standard product that is used with standard applications, which is why we use it.

There is no lack of features.

There are newer models that are available on the market. The agility of the non-SQL-based features is relevant on the market.

Integration is one thing but it's making use of all the iterations or the new cloud data result.

Today's architectures are in many different directions. Not always via SQL relational databases, but also NoSQL databases, and they have a pretty good Java database as well.

We have been using SQL Server in our organization for 10 years, but I am not a day-to-day user.

We use a couple of the versions. We have used the 2016 version and most likely have used some newer versions as well.

SQL Server is a stable product.

We don't have any issues with the scalability of SQL Server.

We have hundreds of thousands of applications using this solution.

We have a dedicated Microsoft account team and we have also dedicated support conditions.

Areas in our organization use AWS Lambda.

We use other relational databases. The most important product besides SQL Server is Oracle. We use SQL Server and Oracle equally.

I am not a patient person with installations, but there are no issues with the installation of this solution.

We have a database team to maintain this solution along with an engineering team, an operational team and we have eternal resources.

The enterprise-level license agreement is very complicated. It's complex, not only with SQL server but with a number of products.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I would rate SQL Server an eight out of ten.

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.