SQL Server Reviews

SQL Server can be used for managing and storing information.

I have a lot of databases with more than one terabyte of information and we use technology, such as Stretch database to switch out the information to Azure databases with this type of technology.

SQL Server could improve the integration with nonrational database solutions, such as MongoDB.

I have been using SQL Server for eight years.

SQL Server has good performance. It is one of the best features.

We have approximately 300 instances of SQL Server. 

I have approximately five customers using this solution.

I currently have one ticket open with Microsoft support and I have been waiting about two days. However, it's not a critical incident. The technical support they provide us is good.

In the latest version of SQL Server, Microsoft has split the product. For example, if you want to start with the engine or the reporting server you have to download it separately.  I think that the installation is easier on the new versions. There are other kinds of options that you can set up in the installation progress. For example, the number of 10 DV files or the limit of maximum use of memory.

The installation process takes approximately 10 minutes.

There is a license to use this solution. However, the model is not easy to understand. There is a guide you have to read about all the information on how it works. If you read this documentation, you can understand how it works. We are paying for our SQL Servers by CPU cores with an enterprise license.

If a new company wants to implement SQL Server, they need to know that there should be a person who has all the knowledge about DBA position, such as how the SQL Server will be set up because I have a lot of customers and when I checked they have a lot of bad options or practicing in their SQL Servers instance. If someone wants to start with SQL Server, they have to improve and have good knowledge about this technology. It's important to have knowledge about this technology. They should take some courses or maybe have a person who has all the knowledge about this technology with certification, it's the most important. It's not easy to keep up to date with the best practice from a provider, in this case, Microsoft.

I rate SQL Server a seven 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 use the solution for nearly all of the services we provide that utilize Windows Server. We use it to provide continuous service and in respects of our mail server. 

We have found the feature that allows us to publish web applications to be valuable. 

We have 20 servers and we use disparate ones for different applications, such as Kaspersky Anti-Virus Server and Windows SharePoint in respects of the surveillance system. 

The solution should be more secure and stable and have better performance, particularly as concerns the endpoint operating systems. I would like to have a better operating system that links the CPU and the RAM efficiently.

For the majority of our servers we have not used other operating systems, although there are certain features or requirements that necessitated their use, such as Red Hat. This was rare. Mostly, we used Windows OS. 

As for the performance issue, we have recently encountered situations in which everything would fail in spite of the CPU and memory being 100 percent operable. 

We have been using SQL Server for 12 or 13 years.

As we have faced problems with the solution in both the past and present, I feel it could be more stable. 

The solution seems scalable to me. 

We have not had experience with technical support and have handled this independently whenever we encountered problems. 

When it comes to the installation of the operating system, we have found it to be easy and user-friendly. 

Our greatest praise for the solution we reserve for its ease of installation and usage. These provide definite advantages. Perhaps this can be attributed to the fact that we have always made use of the solution for nearly every relevant company in South Africa.

While I cannot recall exactly how long the installation lasted, I did recently install endpoint Windows 10 Operating System and this took an hour and a half. 

We were able to handle the installation on our own, as we are well versed in this process when it comes to Windows OS.

On an individual basis, we solely make use of Windows OS. There are between 300 and 400 people in our organization who do so. 

Generally speaking, we do not make use of a technical team for deployment and maintenance purposes and do so internally. There are a maximum of seven or eight people in our organization who are responsible for this. We are talking about technical people who are responsible for the direct installation and configuration of Windows OS and they do not include managers. 

I believe the licensing to be on an annual basis. In 2019 we purchased a three year license. 

We did not evaluate other other options before going with the solution. 

I rate SQL Server as a seven out of ten. 

The solution is primarily used for studying data and statistics. We have some services that we are monitoring and keeping records and doing reports, and we use it for that.

The solution is quite stable.

The solution has the capability of scaling.

The performance is good. 

It's very easy to use.

The solution was delivered to us, and we really don't interface with the solution directly. I can't speak to any features that are missing.

The only people that can use it directly are developers. It's not for everyday users.

The pricing in general could be better.

We've used the solution for about five years or so. It's been a while.

The solution is stable. It's reliable. We do not deal with bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

The solution can scale, however, it's dependant on the hardware. It's not limitless.

There are about ten users using the solution at this time.

We do have plans to increase usage in the future.

We don't interface with Microsoft support. We always go to the vendor that performed the integration for us.

We did not implement the solution. We had it delivered to us.

I've done an installation in the past, however, not at this company. It's straightforward. It's simple due to the fact that it's going to be installed on the Microsoft operating system, not like MySQL that's used on a Linux server.

Deployment may take about 15 minutes or so.

We have a technical team of about eight people that can handle maintenance as necessary.

We had an integrator deliver the solution to us, as we are not ourselves developers.

I don't have any details on the licensing in terms of any details or costs. It's not an aspect of the solution I directly deal with.

We are just customers and end-users. We don't have any business relationship with the company.

We use the express edition of the solution.

It was delivered as part of a solution. We are not developers. It was a turnkey solution delivered to us by an integrator, and we are doing some maintenance, however, we are not developing the content of the database. It was used as part of our services for maybe five years or more.

The database is on the back end. We are using it with our applications at the front end that we are interfacing with. In terms of the SQL server, we don't go and use it directly. We use it through the application. There's an application that is providing a user interface for us, and we work on that user interface. We don't work on the native interface of the SQL server.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a seven out of ten. I've heard that Oracle is better.

I'd recommend this solution to other companies.

We use SQL Server for our internal applications.

Working with SQL Server, it is quite convenient to use the SSMS tools to write a profile. I also like the profiling tools.

I like that the new version has a memory-optimized table to improve the performance.

We had some difficulty doing the performance tuning when we migrated from the 2008 version to the 2016 version. We experienced a drop in the performance. We could not understand or figure out what caused the drop in performance. We did not change any settings to cause this effect. We tried to keep the same settings.

We feel that when running the 2008 version, it was much quicker in terms of performance. 

That is an area of SQL Server that can be improved. Moving to a new version, you shouldn't have to change the configuration.

We have not been able to utilize it fully because it is not straightforward.

I would like to see the performance improved. Migrating should be easier and the scalability needs improvement.

I have been using this solution for many years. 

We are using version 2016.

It's a stable product.

In terms of scalability, it has some room for improvement.

We have 20 people in our organization who are using this solution.

We don't usually get support from Microsoft. We get it from our software vendors or we try to do it ourselves.

We are somewhat satisfied with the support that we have received from the vendor, but not fully because of the issue we faced when we moved to a newer version. But in other areas, it's okay.

We have used SQL Server from the beginning.

The initial setup was moderate. It was not easy but it was not difficult.

I would rate SQL Server a nine out of ten.

Initially as a post-transactional database, but now it's mainly a transactional database and for Analysis Services.

It's a very capable, efficient, price-performant OLAP server on which we can build our solutions.

Analysis Services, because we are an independent software vendor in the business-intelligence area.

The web interface and the command line interface could be better so we could manage and build some things around an API. If we could build our own solution, our own interface, and then manage the solution through that open API, that would be better.

With the new, big releases, there's quite a lot of work that we have to do. From 2005 to 2008, and then from 2012 to 2016. But, otherwise, it's quite stable. It's nice.

Even for us, it's quite okay. For the type of customers we have now, it's okay. But, for a big amount of data, when we are speaking about IoT Segments, and Big Data projects, there are performance issues.

If there wasn't Stack Overflow, that would be a problem. But luckily there are also other resources on the web which we can use to help ourselves. Just depending on Microsoft support it would not be so great.

We used PostgreSQL, and we also used some other OLAP servers.

It's more and more complex. The 2005 version was very nice and neat, but now it's more and more complicated.

The price has been going higher and higher. The market is quite price sensitive.

At that time there was also Sybase, Oracle, MySQL. That's at the time those databases were up.

It's good if you need OLAP services.

I give it a seven out of 10 overall, because of the things mentioned: First is that during the version upgrades, sometimes things are complicated. The second thing is the support is not so... without an open-source community it would not be so good. Third is the pricing, because it's changing, sometimes it's confusing.

It allows me to obtain access to data that I would not otherwise obtain access to from different programs. It has helped pull statistics and data, then put it into a report form to do some Power BI on it. This really helps people above me to view what we are doing, how we are doing it, and how to improve it.

Overall, it just makes your job simpler.

• Ease of installation.
• Ease of creating your databases.
• Ease of changing what your databases look like when you need to.
• Creating tables is simple.
• They have lots of different options that you can use for the fields within the tables. 

It is a simple query language. It is consistent across all versions. If you start with an older version, move to the newer version. The same code will still work.

It can go easily on a virtual machine and be accommodated by a virtual machine easily. That is a plus, as not all databases can handle that. It also will do clustering, so you can have two database servers looking at the same data simultaneously. 

You can always access the data. You could have an offsite and an onsite, and if the onsite goes down, the offsite picks it up. I like that flexibility to provide continuing operations.

Right now, the tool you use to query the system updates every month. It pesters you to update the Client every month when there is nothing new that you really need to add, but it is constantly pestering you. I do not care for it.

I have no problems with stability at all, even when they are clustered.

Scalability depends on the version. I have to know ahead of time what version I need, but that is typical of all database software. However, as long as I build it correctly, it works great.

I have not had support for the SQL Server product. 

This is Microsoft, so you just buy a ticket and they will just work with you until it is fixed. However, I have not had any issues where I needed to contact them.

We previously used MySQL, because it is a free product. It was just hard to operate, do backups, and make automated. Also, it was not scalable.

Initial setup is real simple. Just install it. Though, I recommend for new users to at least look online for training or a manual.

It has the easiest licensing.

We are a Microsoft shop, so we use Active Directory. That integrates well with this product, but we did look at Oracle. We also looked at IBM. This was the best price point for us for what we were getting.

SQL Server integration services tools

Data quality services tools

Master data services tools

SQL Server reporting services tools

Data partitioning (horizontal partitioning) tools

ColumnStore indexes

In-memory OLTP tables

We design and implement data warehouse solutions with SQL Server 2016 Developer Edition tools. This solution has:

Given us high levels of productivity

Allowed us to use an agile approach to the design and implementation of data warehouse solutions for our customers

Given us a competitive advantage in our market

We do not have much to complain about SQL Server 2016 Developer Edition in itself.

We do have some complaints regarding licensing. In an emerging market like Argentina, it is very steep for our customers to pay USD 28,000 or more on licensing for an instance of SQL Server 2016 Enterprise Edition. This poses a limiting factor to our growth.

We have been using SQL Server 2016 Developer Edition for a few months so far. We have been using the previous version (SQL Server 2014 Developer Edition) for more than two years.

We did not encounter any deployment issues.

We did not encounter any stability issues.

We did not encounter any scalability issues. This is the case even though the Developers Edition does not offer the same level of performance and scalability that the equivalent Enterprise Edition offers.

As usual, Microsoft offers very good customer service. The amount of resources (self-study materials, online courses, and tutorials) is huge and most of it is free. Paid customer service is also very good.

Paid technical support is very good and efficient.

I have used data warehouse tools from Microsoft since SQL Server 2000.

If you do the proper training prior to the setup, there will be no issues. However, the learning curve is wide and tall.

You could get started fast and sure if you stick to the many wizards included with the tools. However, the scope of those said wizards is limited.

We implemented with an in-house team only, with proper, prior training that was also done in-house.

Since SQL Server 2014 Developer Edition, Microsoft has been offering these tools free of charge. The ROI is mainly focused around training investment. We do the training in-house, so the ROI is around one year.

We have no issues with pricing and licensing for SQL Server 2016 Developer Edition, as it is free of charge. The thorny issue is with pricing and licensing with customers.

We do our best to design data warehouse solutions that can cover requirements from our customers within the capabilities of SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition.

The cost-benefit ratio offered by Microsoft's data warehouse solutions is, by a long shot, much more convenient for our customers, small and medium sized companies, than solutions from other vendors.

My advice is focused on companies that develop and offer data warehouse solutions for customers that use SQL Server. Consider the ROI, which is mostly training investment (for the Developer Edition). If training is not done in-house, only hire training from an official Microsoft training center in your region. Look for the best training center. Once you are done with the training, you can start taking customers for data warehouse projects.