SQL Server Reviews

There are many, but I would have to say the two most important for me have been SQL Server Profiler -- to run traces and the ability to kill sessions in the enterprise manager tool. This command-based functionality lets you search and sort through processes actively running on the system to find your i/o hog – that is the user that is overloading the database either through a hung query or bad SQL code.

Once the hog user is found, the terminate or “kill” command can be used to shut down the hanging transaction. Similar to how clearing a vehicle crash on the interstate frees up waiting traffic, this kill command gives other users the ability to continue work as normal once the terminated transaction has been killed. This should be used sparingly though since it can cause waiting applications to corrupt data depending on how the application was written, but it is an often used research feature when a system starts to overload or show major signs of slowing.

In an effort to forego a data warehouse purchase, one company I worked with used a second SQL Server instance loaded to separate hardware as a reporting environment avoiding the need to hire additional employees to support a data warehouse. Essentially, the production database was snapshot and copied nightly to the reporting instance where it was restored through automated processes.

All employees who wrote queries and reports against the reporting instance utilized the same knowledge, skillset and tools already used in the OLTP production environment. While it didn’t have all the abilities of a true data warehouse, it was quickly implemented and well served for the desired purpose.

Multiple operating systems support should improve. The ongoing and newly marketed support for Linux and Unix environments running SQL Server is a big win for Microsoft, in my opinion.

Previous hold back related to open source environments stemmed from admins or management who would not run SQL Server for various reasons which many times boiled down to not liking Microsoft as a company.

Open source and Microsoft have conflicted in the open source world for years, but I think Microsoft is finally starting to turn that tide in an effort to compete with other vendors.

20 years. I began as a Microsoft Access database programmer in 1998 connecting early dynamic intranet websites to Access backend databases.

I later progressed to the SQL Server 2000 environment and have utilized SQL Server ever since then.

Issues encountered with stability were always correctable assuming we as a business were willing to spend money. The two major issues that come to mind were slowing of image files loading to disk using SQL Server and lack of proper indexing.

Images were archived for a 30 year legal period at a rate of at least 12 million per year and we eventually just hit a max depth of data where SQL Server had a hard time returning results. Shortening the physical file path structure of how deep SQL Server had to dig through the hard drive in addition to changing to new and improved disk technologies resolved the problem.

After this drive change occurred, a separate problem started where our database came to a crawl which is when we realized our regularly scheduled database index had not been updated to accommodate the new structure changes. A new index was put in place which is when SQL Server started humming along better than ever.

Microsoft makes life easy to expand your environment through clustering tools and after-hours operational scheduling features. SQL Server is easily suited for small businesses where it found huge popularity, but daily operations can sometimes be overlooked as the business grows causing intermittent operational kinks. I have seen a few small businesses determine that a slowing or overloaded SQL Server environment means they should look at more enterprise level databases, which is simply not the case.

Just like a Windows PC needs basic defragmentation maintenance to run effectively, SQL Server needs its own regular maintenance. There are many options available to improve the performance of SQL Server including the simple add-on clustering features which will balance excess load on the server.

In addition, database indexes need to either be created or re-indexed periodically. A database does not automatically know how an application was designed although it’s very good at trying to guess using built-in scheme mapping software. Creating indexes and related maintenance schedules specific to your environment can make a huge difference in how quickly SQL Server responds to data requests.

Disk partitions are another method for improvement. No matter how well SQL Server software is configured, it is limited by the hardware level. Underlying disk usage grows as data grows meaning the more data you add to the database results in the longer it will take for the database to find data on-disk. That’s when it’s time to either spread data across many independent disk sets or move to more expensive flash drives which save time by avoiding read & write disk operations.

These options, of course, require time, effort, and money, but they have been well worth the costs of doing business based on my experience.

I have only had to call Microsoft support 5 times in my nearly 20-year career, but they were extremely helpful. The one frustrating experience was 10 years ago when I worked over the phone 8 hours straight with 3 separate techs from the India location. Keep in mind, these were days pre-remote support meaning I had to verbally translate every diagnostic error I was seeing on the screen and assume the tech was clear on the meaning. The techs I worked with were extremely nice and tried hard to help, but I reached my frustration level due to the verbal language barrier.

The senior tech, who I spent the most time working with, had an extremely thick accent and was hard to understand. I could tell he had hit a dead-end on his knowledge of the product so I finally asked to be transferred to a specialist in America. Once I found the right person in the US, my problem was resolved within an hour.

In hindsight, I knew the senior tech was lost at the 6-hour mark, so I should have spoken up then, but he never complained and kept trying different solutions, which is good on Microsoft’s part.

My team and I have tried many different technologies including MySQL (cheap but effective), Oracle (expensive and effective), PostgreSQL, and DB2. I never jumped on the PostgreSQL or DB2 train, but could not give you a specific reason why due to my limited knowledge of the products. It usually came down to lack of knowledge for available programmers in our area, meaning we would have to train new hires and take a lot of time getting them familiar with a new database structure. That defaulted us to either Oracle or SQL Server since MySQL was not used in production at the time due to limitations surrounding support.

Oracle owns MySQL these days and they, of course, would prefer you run full fledged Oracle database for support needs. Oracle’s supremely expensive licensing has normally pushed me and coworkers to Microsoft SQL Server although every organization I have worked with pays for some form of Oracle even though SQL Server is primarily touching end users.

I personally feel Oracle is a great database but also think Microsoft SQL Server can be configured to run just as well as Oracle in most cases. The problem I normally find is that many bloated applications run SQL Server where more streamlined (and many times less functional) applications run Oracle. For that reason primarily, Oracle has had a better reputation in the pre-Amazon world.

This could all change in the years to come as Microsoft starts to fight Amazon and Google in cloud processing.

Creating a SQL Server instance using the pre-installed GUI setup screen available in either Visual Studio or Enterprise Manager can be very simple to create and maintain database “instances” making it a prime choice for small startup businesses.

In addition, Microsoft has added loads of training videos on their website along with step-by-step instructions for creating and maintaining servers. The user can get as complex as desired in SQL Server by learning all the behind-the-scenes commands the GUI is using. You will start researching commands quickly once the first SQL Server error occurs and the GUI doesn’t know how to resolve it.

For the most part, what you see is what you get with Microsoft’s licensing website. I sat through many hours of negotiations with many database and application vendors. Some application vendors try negotiating a better deal based on their licensed volume, but only twice have I seen Microsoft cater to lower licensing and it was because they wanted to make long-term wins with the customer knowing they had the possibility of gaining market share.

That said, Microsoft is still usually cheaper than Oracle who will sometimes look cheaper to start with but add the possibility of higher long term rates. Asking for a discount can never hurt.

MySQL (now owned by Oracle) is sometimes used internally for dynamic website needs, but Oracle is the only competitor evaluated for SQL Server.

Start in the cloud if feasibly possible and if it makes sense for your business. I have mostly worked with organizations that still don’t trust the cloud for security and legal reasons, but Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are releasing promising products in the cloud that are leaps and bounds ahead of processing power for local servers assuming your organization is willing to pay what it takes. I have priced cloud services enough to know they’re expensive, but they could replace a lot of unknowns for growing businesses or those starting from scratch; mainly network security, redundancy and technical skillset of employees.

Cloud services have full-time employees focusing on those niches meaning you as an employer will have less headaches at night.

According to CNBC and Synergy Research Group as of this writing, Amazon AWS leads 33% of global cloud market share. That may sound like a small number, but it’s by far the majority of customers since Amazon’s AWS cloud revenue is more than the next five providers combined. Two of those 5 providers are Microsoft and Google.

And for those of you new to the cloud, you do have the ability to run Microsoft products, including Microsoft SQL Server, in the AWS cloud.

I use the solution in my company to take care of the database management area.

The solution should provide users with features to automate some of the daily routines for which there are different tools available. SQL Server should serve as an out-of-the-box tool for database maintenance.

Maintenance of the solution is an area of concern, and improvements can be helpful. The solution should offer an out-of-the-box tool with automatic maintenance procedures, which could make it easier for less experienced people to set up the product easily.

I have been using SQL Server for twenty five years. My company is a system integrator and a Microsoft partner.

It is an extremely stable solution.

It is a scalable solution.

I deal with small, medium, and large-sized customers who use the tool.

It takes a lot of time for users to reach out to the right technical experts who can resolve their issues. Users are redirected to go through the medium-level support, who fail to resolve their issues. I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

I have limited experience with MySQL. I like SQL Server more than MySQL. Compared to SQL Server, MySQL requires more technical expertise in order to deal with some easy tasks.

The product's initial setup phase is easy.

The solution can be deployed in ten to fifteen minutes.

The product is offered at a very high price, specifically for the enterprise segment, making it very difficult for our company to sell the product to our customers. In the enterprise segment, the tool has quite a bit of experience. For normal cases, the prices are okay.

For development purposes, the tool is free. For medium-sized customers who don't need some enterprise features, the tool would be available for 200 USD per month. For the enterprise segment, the tool's cost can go up to 6,000 USD.

I have limited experience with scaling SQL Server for large datasets.

Speaking about the most beneficial for our company's data analysis needs, I don't know the huge range of services offered by Microsoft, like reporting or integration services, which make it easy for the users to deal with database manipulation, integrations, and reporting. The aforementioned services offered by Microsoft are quite user-friendly.

The tool covers almost all of the security features for data protection with a variety of access protocols, and the database encryption part covers all the cases in my company.

The solution is easy to maintain if you know what exactly you need to do.

The people required for maintenance depend on the scale at which the product is used in an environment, but under normal circumstances, one person is required to take care of the maintenance process.

My company uses the tool for a variety of integrations, especially with the old legacy systems, which can easily be adapted to SQL Server. With modern architectures and web services, it is also possible to integrate SQL Server with any product in the market currently.

Before buying the product, users should check and remember all the licensing parts of the tool since it can be very complex. Users should check very thoroughly for the use case and exactly what prices they need to pay to use it.

I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

We use it for the banking database. It is for banking software, accounting software, and human resource software that we develop to run our bank.

In our production environment, we are using SQL Server 2014 Enterprise, but we also have an installation of SQL Server 2019 for our development environment.

It is secure, and it is fast. For our present database size, we are using the Always-On feature on SQL Server so that our transactions are replicated among three servers. If one server goes down, we can find the data from other servers. We have benefited from this feature.

We use SQL Server Reporting Services, and it is very good. We use scheduled jobs to transfer reports from one server to another server. 

It needs to be improved to handle big data for large volumes of transactions for big industries. As compared to Oracle Database, SQL Server is not suitable for big data or large organizations where the database size could be more than 100 GB or more. In our country, for a large database and a large volume of transactions, we normally use Oracle Database. Most of the large banks are shifting from SQL Server to Oracle Database because of its slowness. 

We have been using this solution since 2008.

For big organizations, like ours, SQL Server is very good in terms of reliability and security. It has the Always-On feature and many more features. I appreciate its reliability.

I don't know whether SQL Server can support large organizations where the database size is more than 100 GB. It might be because of SQL Server, or it might be because of the programming of the software vendor, but a lot of people think that it is a problem with SQL Server. It can't handle a large amount of data or large data size.

In terms of its usage, about 90% of our applications are running on the SQL Server database. We have around 1,600 users for our software, and all the applications are connected to the SQL Server database.

So far, we didn't ask for any technical support.

We used a flat-file database earlier, and since 2008, we have been using SQL Server. We started with SQL Server 2008 edition, and later on moved to 2012, 2014, and 2019.

We switched because there were many problems in the flat-file database. There was so much inconsistency. Some files were updated, and some files were not. There were big network issues. SQL Server has eliminated such issues, so either all transactions happen or nothing happens. This is a Relational Database Management System, and this is at another level compared to the flat-file database.

SQL Server is very user-friendly and very simple. It is very comfortable for us. We have been using it for a long time, so it is not a problem at all.

The deployment of our production server took less than 15 days.

It was done in-house with the help of our vendor. They have Microsoft-certified people. I have also worked on SQL Server for a long time, so we have an idea of how to migrate from one database to another. It was not a big issue for us.

At present, we have five people for its maintenance.

We are using licensed software for our environment. We have the Enterprise license, and we have a standard additional license.

As compared to Oracle Database, SQL Server is less expensive. For mid-sized organizations, SQL Server is completely all right, but people say it can't support large organizations with more than 2,000 users.

Before implementing SQL Server, you need to learn the concept, design, architecture, and data types of a relational database. You can learn it from YouTube. It is step-based, and you can install it. After that, you can migrate your existing SQL Server to the new SQL Server, depending on the size of the data, data architecture, and data type. 

I would rate it an eight out of 10 because I'm satisfied with SQL Server. It is working fine.

Our correlation and relational databases are on Microsoft SQL Server.

The company uses two platforms: MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server. Some applications are on MySQL, and some applications are SQL Server. 

I have pretty much worked all my life in Microsoft SQL Server.

I am in the process of creating a data strategy to consolidate multiple siloed data centers. Once my plan is finalized and approved, then we are going to execute it on the Microsoft platform.

• Performance-wise, it is an excellent tool.
• It is a Microsoft product, so there's a lot of support. 
• It's not a new tool; it has been around for a while. 
• It is one of the top five relational databases in the market. 
• It is very user-friendly.
• There are a lot of resources available for it.

I would like to see native plugins built for other platforms versus having to buy third-party plugins to tap into S3 buckets and AWS Cloud. Right now, it does not have those built-in plugins.

I know that they are building SQL Server for the Unix environment, which is in the beta version, and not out yet. This has been a long time wish for a lot of people. Once that is out, we'll be able to tell how diversified they have become in regards to other platforms.

It hasn't 100 percent on scalability and third-party plugins.

It is one of the most stable relational databases out there.

With the new versions and Azure, which is in the cloud, these do accommodate scalability. Until the 2014 version, the scalability wasn't there, but from the 2016 version and above, I think they have taken all these scalability features into consideration.

I have not used technical support for Microsoft with my current company. I have used them in the past. It depends on the tier of support that was purchased by the company as to the level of support that you receive.

Our company has probably been using this solution since it was released.

It is expensive, but you get what you pay for.

Since we are a cloud-based company, there is AWS pricing on top of the SQL Server pricing. The Enterprise Edition can typically sell from around $1000 dollars a month, which is not cheap. Then, there is an additional one-time Windows cost, based on the code, which can go anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000 for the license.

From my perspective, the two vendors for this are Microsoft and Amazon (AWS).

They are working on making it better with every release, compared to Oracle Db2 and IBM.

I would definitely recommend SQL Server. It's not cheaper any more, like it used to be, but if you can afford it, then it's the best.

When I select a vendor, from a tool perspective, I make sure that they have full support available, have been in the market for awhile, and the solution/application is stable.

From an open source perspective, like MySQL, Aurora, and MongoDB, they have done a great job in making a robust database container.

We use SQL Server to store applications. The SQL Server manages various functions, such as digital innovation projects, document storage, handling login credentials, and maintaining authentication and authorization through the database.

Unlike MySQL, SQL Server is advantageous because it allows the execution of stored procedures and commands. It's easy to understand, run, and manage. Also, Microsoft frequently updates SQL Server, quickly resolving issues in new versions.

I have been working with the product for three years. 

My team has five users. 

The tool's deployment is easy. 

SQL Server offers three versions. You can get a free trial for 30 days. 

The solution is easy to understand if you know basic queries. I rate it a nine out of ten. 

Out of all the tools in the complete SQL Server package, I'm mainly using Toolbox and SQL Profiler because I'm using SSIS packets, so we're using job scheduling a lot. And sometimes we are creating the SSIS packages, so I'm using SQL Server for MSD for maintenance purposes. SQL Server is quite user-friendly. I have experience with Oracle and PostgreSQL, so out of three, I like SQL Server a lot.

They could increase the intelligence of SQL Server. That would be good for us.  There are some good intelligent features in SQL Server. However, they need to increase the intelligence because people switching to SQL Server from other solutions are not so familiar with it. I've been working with SQL Server for the last six years, but people are coming from MySQL or Oracle, so it will take one or two months to adjust. Still, they could add some intelligent tools to convert Oracle into SQL Server something like that. 

And sometimes when I'm writing a function, there is already a predefined structure available. So if they defined their structure more precisely, that would be good for us. And the last thing I would like to add is that SQL Server should handle queries more like Oracle does. For example, you submit a query in Oracle, and the whole table comes up. In SQL Server, you go to the table, right-click, and it lets you see the first 200 rows. Then on top of that, you can add 200 more rows.

So in place of those 200 rows, if I can update all my table records or search my table record without a new search query, it'll be very beneficial. That functionality exists in Oracle, but this feature is not available everywhere in SQL Server. So if SQL Server had the feature, it'd be great because SQL Server is lacking only on this point. For example, one of my clients is a semi-technical person, so I have to train them to file a query in SQL. And they say that Oracle is much better. Say, for example, that I wanted to query a particular employee from a list of all staff. So the query output comes, and they can directly filter out the data by just applying the filter. They don't have to use the drop-down menu and search for all the employees with a given name. 

I've been using SQL Server for the last six years. I'm working with SSIS, SSRS, or MDS. These tools are part of SQL Server, and the back-end queries are developed in SQL Server. 

SQL Server is stable. SQL Server has crashed only two times in six years, but it wasn't a major system error. 

It may be a licensing issue, but sometimes its operating speed becomes slow if we have multiple users. It's lacking some performance, but it's acceptable because we have a heavy load. And I would like to add that we're running SQL Server and SSIS at the same time. So while I've found that SQL Server is quite fast, SSIS is a part of SQL Server. It is just for data testing in India. But if a person knows SSIS, then they usually have very little knowledge about SQL and vice versa.

I know both of them. I found that maybe it's a bad habit, but I'm using SSIS packages. And in the SSIS package, I'm using Toolbox from SQL Server to improve the latency. Implementing both together takes a little time. And one more point is data handling. I am just forwarding the error names, and there are multiple errors in the SQL Server tool, but what if a person comes to work under me and has only one or two years of experience?  Sometimes it might be difficult for them to understand what the errors mean. For example, when joining data, it's easy to implement the inner joint. In the inner joint, there are two columns, so when there's an output error, someone who is inexperienced with SQL Server might not understand. Error messages should be a little more precise and defined, so it's easy to understand.

Setting up an individual SQL Server is pretty straightforward, but when you are implementing multiple tools, it's more complicated. In terms of maintenance, for the DBA part, there are two based in my company because I am on a master device, so they don't allow me to maintain the server part. So one person is from South Korea, and the other is from China. They are handling my SQL Server. So maybe there are multiple teams, but I am contacting these two guys, the DBA. And I'm MDS, so I'm a single person. There are two people on my team, and I have one junior staff member. So I have a three-person team, and there are two DBA sites because I'm discussing my master team. I am deployed on the business side, and there are more than 80 people who are end-users of SQL.

If you're using SQL Server along with SSIS and SSRS tools, it works pretty smoothly and all. When working with Oracle SQL, PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc, there are a few problems with the connection.

Overall, SQL Server is good, but sometimes, optimization becomes a little bit tricky when you're using SQL Servers in place of Oracle. For example, while I was implementing two queries one time, the SQL Server gave me the wrong results. This wasn't because of their internal modules. So there may have been some missing data, but SQL Server failed to identify those issues. SQL Server needs to improve there.

For example, say there is a line with a value of 136 or 137. The second value is a space, and the third value is null. And the last one is space. So a space means this is also null. So you are comparing these four values, and if you don't have any idea about data, it's a little problematic. So cases like this, we can deal with such queries using syntax, but if a person has no idea how to deal with this, they'll face an issue.

Here's another example. Say there's a team query that means we are erasing data from the teams, and some people are just analyzing the string. So I see data from it, which means the calling system is there. In the calling system, we receive the data to call anyone, and that type of wire call setup is there. So I am receiving a full-text format from the file I have to upload in the SSIS package. And some cells have a null value. It's a text file, so you can understand there are blanks in some places. I don't know the file type, so I am just trying to dump it into our SQL Server. But when I have time to get to that table, I realize that some values are null, space, and blank. So these four values make problems for me.

I rate SQL Server nine out of 10. I would recommend SQL Server to anyone because you can use cloud-based services, so it's very beneficial. If you install SQL Server on-premise and on the Azure cloud, it is much more advantageous for you. 

There are many applications between Microsoft and SQL. Most are in the legacy direction, but some are more modern databases with those application requirements. We have used it for multi-purposes such as back-office products applications and cloud office environments.

The solution is easy to use, has rich feature sets, and is business-oriented. 

They could improve the solution by allowing more portability between on-premise and the cloud.

More improvements can be brought around hyper-threading. Like we see in work engines of hyper-threading. It is very complex in terms of the way they do it. If it was via CPU or something else, it would be much easier.

In a future release, they could improve by expanding their form base capabilities.

I have been using the solution for a couple of years.

I have found the solution to be very stable.

The solution is scalable.

The support is good for the solution.

We used Oracle and DB2 in the past.

Initially, the installation took a while. We have started deploying configurations that are now standardized. We have automated it, but it can still be problematic. For the most part, the installation is now quite easy. Additionally, The way they have many configurable parameters that influence performance is in a way problematic.

We did the deployment of the solution and we have a team of 15 people doing the deployment and maintenance.

The licenses are really expensive. Their licensing model should be more simplistic.

I would recommend this solution to others and we plan to keep using it in the future.

I rate SQL Server a nine out of ten.

I use the solution in my company for .NET programs and as a database.

The solution's most valuable part revolves around data management, which can be seen in its audit features and performance.

The tool needs to develop a better audit control mechanism.

Even if you have some technical agreement with Microsoft, the technical support of the solution won't help you. The support needs to be improved.

I have been using SQL Server for eight years. I am an end-user of the solution.

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

The scalability features of the product are simple for me to use.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Around five percent of the people in my company use the tool.

I rate the technical support a five to six out of ten.

Neutral

I have worked with Microsoft Entra ID Protection for ten years. I also use Microsoft Defender.

Over the other solutions of the market, I started to use SQL Server since it is available for free and is more secure, while offering good performance. SQL Server offers good performance even over Elasticsearch, or maybe the others open-source database products.

The product's initial setup phase is very easy. On a scale of one to ten, if one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the setup phase a ten.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution can be deployed in a few hours.

My company's in-house team carried out the product's deployment process.

The tool is not something that helps with the cost saving part, but I can say that is a practical tool to use.

On a scale of one to ten, when one is cheap and ten is an expensive solution, I rate the product price as seven. The product is expensive.

The tool's integration capabilities are very good. We don't have any problems.

I don't have any idea about how the product can be used for AI-driven projects because we don't use AI.

I don't recommend the tool to others. I recommended free products because they are tools that offer high performance.

I rate the tool a seven out of ten.