SQL Server Reviews

In my role as faculty, I would use it to facilitate having a database with all the teachers needed that are equivalent to Oracle as a database for a small scale project.

The most valuable aspect of the solution is that the metadata is just generalized. Metadata is the way that data is described both for technical aspects of building a database and for the user interfaces. Our metadata is the objects attached to the database, not in the software. 

It helps with moving the design of the database into reality.

The server itself doesn't need much improvement. 

The product overall would benefit from the addition of better tutorials to help master the skills necessary to actually build a project database. Right now, what is available isn't sufficient.

Overall, I would suggest a nice tight integration with the toolset now known as Power BI. It might not even be missing, however, I'm planning to concentrate a lot of my time with the tutorials and I have Power BI loaded onto my HP laptop. bA brilliant student did it for me when she demoed it in a class. I'm going to use that copy of it and have many tutorials to get ready. 

I have enough experience to support students and grad students who use it as a database backend to accomplish their projects.

I have to qualify my experience with "using" the solution. I have done not very much on my own individually or for a client using SQL Server. I have been supportive in the role of facilitator for students to succeed with it and to be observant of how it is very similar in conceptual important ways to my very deep experience with Oracle as the database backend.

That said, I've been familiar with the solution for about ten years now.

What I don't know yet is if it would be stable when being migrated from the scale of a project that would be in a prototype on a small machine, into a much larger environment in order to get ready to go to production. I'm not sure of that experience, whether it's vulnerable or not. I haven't tried it.

However, in my experience, so far, the solution is quite stable. In terms of stability, with Microsoft being so supportive of its success, and so many smart professionals who have the skillsets to use it, that it would be stable. I'm confident about that. It's not a new tool, so stable being defined as it doesn't break down.

In terms of scalability, with the right people supporting it, who have the skills to do so, it would scale up. It's likely to be true in the context of the overall tool called Power BI that Microsoft has released, and which has high credibility among Gardner Group and others about it being available for business intelligence.

The solution isn't used often or widely per se. Not many people, if any, use it regularly due to the fact that an instance of SQL Server is set up only to accomplish a project relevant to a course that needs to have a database. After that, it doesn't stick around. It doesn't last longer than that.

Previous to my position at the university, I worked both as an employee and a consultant and was very much involved with Oracle as a database for years, going back to 1997 and until about 2010.

The initial setup isn't complex. It's certainly straightforward. The downloads and the installs don't all fall apart. It succeeds. The constraint is in the context of the students enabling a SQL Server to run on a laptop. That's a constraint rather than on an actual problem with the hardware server itself. 

Deployment takes, on average, about four hours. After that, you have a somewhat bare-bones server with the capability of running SQL datum to create the data itself or to import it from another database.

Since the solution is only really used for training purposes for classes and isn't meant to exist permanently, there's no one who needs to really maintain it.

I don't recall any help from people in the university who had the knowledge to support a student who was doing it for the course I was teaching. Sometimes these students have plenty of experience in their own professional job and they bring it to class to help succeed with the effort.

I, unfortunately, do not handle licensing, so I don't know what the costs are for the product.

MySQL as a database is sufficient for the scale of the projects that I've been talking about for ht purposes we have currently. PostgreSQL, which I do not personally know very well, is something else we looked at. It's a matter of the scale, generally. When I'm teaching, I'm probably the only member of faculty teaching actual database design in our school of engineering. We only would work on something that I call prototyping. Nothing that would reach for the responsibility of becoming our actual production database. 

In August of last summer, we updated to the latest version of the solution. At least, at that time, it was the latest version.

What the school does in its academics is make a minimum training available for students who want to use it. They can learn how.

Now we're all online. I do not know if the University has SQL Server as the backend for any of its regular production databases. I think it only is a database for students to choose when they need one for a project.

I don't think it has extensive utilization. And in the teaching involved for online learning, I would probably express very lightweight recommendations to try it because we're not on campus. We cannot connect to a real server for a backend in order to do the install on onsite. This is just a COVID-19 in constraint.

If a company is considering utilizing this tool in the future, I would advise that they have someone on staff or in a consulting agreement who really knows the tool, and has succeeded with it.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. It's the right tool for production-ready or enabled databases. It's now equivalent to Oracle.

We use it for warehouse data management, as well as for statistical reports. It facilitates tabling and query processing while supporting multiple database operations. 

The solution is valuable because it seamlessly extracts reports and enables the collection of information from different tables.

There is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to limited compatibility across the platform and restricted performance with massive data sets. Enhancing those two areas would significantly improve the operation. It is important to mention the licensing cost, as well. Optimization of the licensing options to fit different needs and businesses would be of great benefit. 

I have used this solution for ten years. 

It is a robust and stable solution. Its tracking record is reliable and it can handle large volumes of data.

SQL Server offers easy scalability, allowing databases to grow as the data and user base expand. 

Their customer service is great. When we faced certain issues, they solved them fast. There were no problems with communication.

Positive

The initial setup is easy, and integrating the system is okay. The only issue is regarding the customization of the business process of the organization, it might take some time. Ultimately, it depends on the client's specific needs.

SQL Server is an expensive solution. Their pricing structure and licensing options are not budget-friendly, so I believe it is an essential factor to consider when choosing the right product.

It proved to be a great fit for medium-sized enterprises, in terms of the variety of the tools it provides. For bigger projects and specific needs, there might be a need to employ different solutions such as Oracle, and ERP systems. But overall, it works great as a relationship database management system. I would rate it eight out of ten. 

It has all of our data. Our company sells contracts when you buy a car. We sell aftermarket insurance for the tyre, wheel, ding, dent, windshield, etc. When somebody buys a contract, we capture all of that data into a legacy database PostgreSQL, and my task is to incorporate that into our financial platform using T-SQL. So, I write queries, procedures, and views. I use SSIS, and I use SSRS. My job is to get the data into our financial system so that we can process claims, payments, cancellations, and refunds. 

In terms of its version, we're up-to-date. We have version 2019.

This is the heart of the whole company. SQL Server is where all of our financials are. It has all of our data.

I've been using SQL Server for 20 years, and there is nothing that it can't do. It is awesome.

When we are talking about event space architecture, scalability generally comes into play. For example, I might have a hundred thousand transactions a second, and then all of a sudden, I build something that everybody in the world wants. The next thing I know is that I have a million transactions a second. So, to be able to process the throughput, I'd have to scale up, and then when the holidays are over, I'm again down to a hundred thousand transactions, and I want to scale back down. SQL Server is not going to do that. In this way, it is not very scalable. One of the reasons why they want us to use Kafka is so that if we need to, we can do that, but our base program is on SQL Server. So, this is where we would use a Kafka event stack so that if I need more servers, I can just write a command, and I can have more consumers, more brokers, and more producers, and when the holiday season is over, it scales right back down again. SQL Server is not going to do that.

I have been using this solution for 20 years.

We do clustering. If one SQL Server goes down, it automatically goes to another one.

I don't ever need tech support. If it breaks, I can just rebuild it.

They're now using a different database for contracting called Road Runner. I don't know what that is, and how it stores data. I don't know anything about it. 

There is also Postgres. I like SQL Server more than Postgres. That's only because I know SQL Server. I don't know Postgres as well. So, I can't say which one is better because I don't have the same amount of experience in both.

I can bring up a SQL Server in an hour or so and set it up.

In terms of maintenance, the number of people required depends on the need. 
We have a team of DBAs, developers, and UA analysts. We probably have 40 people in our IT area who are maintaining our solution. I'm just the developer. I'm the guy who makes the magic happen, but without other people collecting the information that I need to make the magic happen, I'm stuck. Without the guy who is an expert in permissions, partitioning, and performance tuning, I'm stuck. So, it's definitely a team effort. You can do it all, but you don't want to do it all because then you're running your head off, and you don't really get good at anything. It would be a jack of all trades, master of none type of scenario.

You will seldom find a database that was designed correctly. Just because you got a poor-quality database doesn't mean that you're going to get a better database anywhere else. You rarely get to build a thing on your own. Usually, you inherit somebody else's stuff. So, the challenging thing is working with what you have while trying to implement a better solution. My only advice is to be patient.

I would rate it a nine out of 10. I wouldn't give anything a 10 because I don't have that kind of knowledge, but right now, it does what I need it to do.

We use SQL Server to host our ERP system. It serves both as the underlying database and server application software. This database solution handles all our ERP calls.

We use SQL Server to support Business Intelligence. It also connects with Power BI. We create all our views and datasets in SQL, specifically for Power BI. Previously, we used Tableau but transitioned to Power BI for all our analytics needs.

SQL Server provides access to audio information and audio tables. You can customize and create views. The ability to customize and upload these services is uncertain when migrating, but SQL in a local environment or Azure seems suitable for now. The ability to see tables, reviews, and custom script options is good.

The upgrades are unstable.

I have been using SQL Server for several years.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

I rate the solution’s scalability a seven out of ten.

The support is pretty good. We have never had to reach out to Microsoft for issues. It is a pretty solid application.

The initial setup is straightforward. You need to install technical agents and create databases.

We use Active Directory authentication. If you have access to the database, it's secure. Not everyone with access to the database can access it. Only our IT staff or those who require access have permission. It does offer a high level of control and security.

We have a small team. We could explore Azure Virtual Desktop or engage with local partners if we need additional technical knowledge. We employ a cloud gateway, enabling our SQL database to be somewhat cloud-based. This facilitates integration with various cloud applications, such as the Power Platform. We use Power Apps and Power Automate, allowing us to connect to our database in adaptable and scalable ways.

I recommend the solution if it meets your requirements.

Overall, I rate the solution an 8 out of 10.

We use the solution as the backend for the application.

SQL Server is a backend for software products that our company writes and distributes.

SQL Server is easy to use, but there is a great deal of complexity that you can dive into to use it to its best. Also, it integrates well with other platforms.

SQL Server should make the pricing simpler. It should add simplified load-balancing features.

I have been using SQL Server for 24 years.

There's a reporting database feature in SQL Server, but running multiple instances on the same box would be beneficial. That's one limitation we've encountered. Many of our customers utilize a hosting provider that offers multi-tenant SQL Servers, but we cannot implement a multi-tenant reporting database. 

The solution’s scalability is good.

There are a lot of different deployment options. The default options will work pretty well. We have to change a few things for our setup. Deployment is not at all long. It takes a couple of minutes. It took a long time for the first time because I had to go back and redo it and change the configuration, but it runs pretty smoothly now.

The deployment process follows: mount the ISO and run a script. That script retrieves some entries from a table and creates several instances based on that table using active directory SQL Server accounts, which is an out-of-the-box option. There are a lot of features that you can add to the setup to make it quieter. We've automated it so we can spin up an instance as needed for development processes.

Deployment was done in-house.

Overall, I rate the solution a 9 out of 10.

We use the solution for data quality purposes like checking, testing, and writing its cases using data validity and quality measurements.

The valuable features are Excel integration, writing a query in SQL Server, exporting the data, and copying the data.

When transferring data from the SQL Server to Excel, the data types are not copied correctly. This issue might be associated with the formatting of the data types. Specifically, the data types for dates and timestamps have not been copied correctly.

In SQL, as with other databases, abbreviations are commonly used to simplify tasks such as writing queries or commands.

I have been using SQL Server for 3 years. We are using V18.0 of the solution.

The product is stable. The community is big.

I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten.

The data warehouse engine should be scalable.  It's not scalable. We use it every single day.

I rate the solution's scalability a three out of ten.

I have used Oracle Server.

The initial setup is straightforward. The connection to the database is not straightforward. There are many ways to connect to the database. It may be tricky to choose which way to connect.

I rate it seven or eight out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

The solution is good for a transaction database, but its performance is not very good. One or two persons are needed to maintain an SQL server.

I recommend the solution.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We use the solution for continuous integration, including CI/CD integration.

Support could be improved.

I have been using SQL Server since 1992. I’ve used AWS and Azure for two and three years, respectively.

The stability is fine, especially if you're hosting it on AWS or Azure. You can get up to 99.99% stability on AWS.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

You can scale to any extent. You need to increase your EC2 or your app server.

Six team sites with 50 users each are using this solution.

Sometimes the response time was high.

The initial setup is straightforward. Depending on the complexity, setting up the infrastructure can take a while. You can work on MVP. To deploy on AWS, select SQL Server along with several calls and CPU.

The solution was deployed in-house.

You receive other products, like free usage, depending on the number of product shares.

You can use a Cloudflare or web application layer that controls security. Furthermore, you can implement SQL reverse proxy practices for in-house environments and beyond.

To ensure the security of my SQL server, we typically set up a configuration where an API communicates with the SQL Server, and there's a front-end interface. This setup prevents direct access to the database.

Four people are required for the solution’s maintenance, but it depends on the complexity of the solution. You can put one senior and three trainees.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

SQL Server, a widely adopted database management system, is utilized across numerous sectors. Initially competing with Oracle and Db2, SQL Server has gained popularity. It serves as the backend database for a variety of applications. 

The tool's support needs to be improved. 

I have been using the product for 25 years. 

Performance issues are a common concern when using SQL Server. However, it's important to recognize that the problem may not solely lie with SQL Server. It is stable. My team has four members using it. 

I find that using SQL Server is more cost-effective than Oracle. Although Oracle remains the top choice regarding power and stability, SQL Server is steadily catching up. We still have dedicated administrators for Oracle maintenance, whereas SQL Server requires less maintenance. While I'm not entirely clear on all the technical features and comparisons, Oracle generally offers more advanced features, such as table-locking options.

The tool's deployment is easy. 

We also have a data warehouse. This warehouse feeds into Power BI for data presentation. Currently, we're in the process of transitioning because we have various teams and solutions in place.

The tool serves the purpose of managing all the data within a system. It is utilized extensively for storing, processing transactions, and conducting analysis.

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten. Its ability to integrate with other products is good. The tool is popular and easy to manage. You can find resources easily to manage it.