SQL Server Reviews

This client, specifically, is using it for Dynamics NAV. I don't know what they're calling it today. Microsoft changes the names all the time, 365 NAV Dynamics. This is ridiculous. We're using it for that, and we have more of a niche CRM database called Tour de Force. It's owned by a company called White Cup. They own a bunch of companies, and it sits on Microsoft SQL, as well.

One of the things I most like about SQL Server is the log shipping piece.

I have another client who uses GP, and they use Power BI to take the data out of the back end. I'm doing an IT assessment there, so I'm not really involved in that specifically, other than the fact this person has too many rights.

I have an auditing background, and I spent 25 years doing IT auditing as well. I understand I'm not a programmer, but I've been involved with enough of them. The log shipping really is one of the greatest features. It is not the only database you can do it in, but that was one of the better features of it because I am a backup nut. We use Veeam Backup and Replication to a local mass storage, but then we fully replicate everything in Veeam to another site with the exact same server set up at our other location. But I wasn't satisfied with that from a disaster recovery point of view. My IT company was, but I was not. I said, "I want to do SQL log shipping. I want to do an SQL backup and SQL log shipping and move it to Azure in the cloud," which is what we do every day. We have an hour by hour backup, in addition to our multiple nightly backups and our replication to our other site, and we've had to use it and it worked. This is a great feature.

Somebody who knows it would easily say, "No problem," because we set up our log shipping in about three hours. We sometimes have challenges with it in terms of timing, of getting it out, backing it up, and sending it to the cloud. There are always the glitches, but I get a daily report on what's going on. Around 30 backup jobs are running at all times, because it is a big company. It's a 200 person company.

In the next releases, I would only like more enhanced backups and more restore points. Data backup and cyber protection are the number one things everybody should be thinking about now. They may not be, but they should be. We're going to go to the Azure environment because that really is a duplicate of the on-premise environment, just somewhere else.

I would say that I have been directly involved in the ERP world for as long as I can remember, but SQL really didn't appear on my radar until the mid-90s. I know that early GP was out there. I believe it was on an earlier version of SQL. I use it heavily now because I'm the CIO. I'm a consultant, but I'm a CIO of a client for almost nine years, where we have two major databases sitting on SQL.

So I have always been involved in a Microsoft environment.

We are always deploying the latest version. I have multiple clients with SQL and Oracle. But my big client is always up to date.

Whether it is deployed on the cloud or on premises depends on the client. My big client is on-premise and we have a two year plan to move to the cloud.

In terms of scalability, I haven't seen any problems with it. We have 120 users. Every once in a while we get a record lock in our data. It's very rare though. Once every six months somebody hits the same record and same night. It's very rare. You go out for a minute, come back in, and it's over.

I don't have any Fortune 5,000, Fortune 2000, or Fortune 1000 companies. According to the governmental definition, they're small, they're SMB, but my big client is 200 million. To me, that's a lot of money-

But in the eyes of the government, they're still a medium company. I have clients with 1,000 people, but they're only a $50 million company. Those are not for profits. They're paying people 10 bucks an hour. It's very hard to categorize that if you're looking at it from a business perspective versus a technical perspective. I have a client with 1,000 people with 82 sites. So that's a technical challenge, but they don't have the same kind of money as the other people do.

It's a different way to categorize it.

Calling Microsoft is like calling Verizon. I wouldn't do that. I have a middleman that I work with. It's easier because they have more clout than do. I know that.

This client, the big client I've been talking about, had some ancient DOS system from the 70s when I got there in 2012. They had no data dictionary note. I think it was running on an early version of Unix on a Compaq machine. When I got there, it was 15 years old. The thing was still running until six months ago. You can't believe it. This thing wouldn't die. I tried to make it die multiple times, but we converted from that system onto Dynamics NAV.

It's a two year undertaking. The SQL was stable all the time, never had a problem with it.

In terms of the initial setup, you probably need to know what you're doing. I haven't seen any real laypeople get into the tables. I know it's possible to learn. Things like Power BI have made it easier, but if you don't know what the tables are you have to be a very methodical person to be able to do that stuff. We use a company called ArcherPoint for dynamics. They're one of the largest dynamics dealers in the country, and they have their stuff together. This woman I use there knows her stuff. She knows SQL very well, and my IT company also has a senior guy who they often talk to, and it always seems pretty straightforward, whatever they do. It's never a big install.

Usually a few hours and it's over.

This client has money, so I never hear any complaints. It seems reasonable to me. I think the biggest problem that Microsoft had back in the early 2000s was that the pricing of SQL was a nightmare. You could call five Microsoft people at Microsoft, and you'd get five different prices. Microsoft has a problem. Well, they have lots of problems. They characterize themselves as perfect.

From 40 years ago, I already knew well in advance of the clients that there is a security hole. I'm looking at Business Central, and somebody who has a global super admin of the tenant can get into the client's accounting system if they have full rights to their 365 email system. That's a big security gap. Their IT company shouldn't be in their financial system. Why would that be? I came up with the idea after talking to five different Microsoft people to just buy another tenant that they don't have access to and they said, "Oh, that works."

SQL Server is a good mainstream application that has been around for quite some time, and I like when things are around for a while. I don't like to be the first kid on the block. I remember when Power BI first came out. I waited a year and a half to use it.

The big thing for NAV was to get reports. We still use it, but we mostly abandoned it. It's really not working as well as I would've liked. And that reads SQL tables. While that was great, you had to trust the person who wrote it, that it would include all the data you needed. There's a big trust. We often found lots of problems with it, so we decided to just program all these reports inside the application. That worked really well. The thing I don't like is, I know a lot of people don't know about the backend security of SQL. They think others cannot get into their system and I tell them they can, they have the SA password. People are shocked. That's a hole that they should plug.

They should plug that and make that more apparent to people. When I did auditing, most clients had SQL based applications, and we'd always say, "Who's got the SA password," and they'd say, "What are you talking about?" Then we would tell them, and there is all this SQL injection stuff that used to happen. I haven't heard of any hacking through the back end in a while. Because you're talking about cybersecurity being so important now, people can hack in and get into the back end, although 99% of cyber is ransomware through email.

The risk is probably still low, but I try to close up all the gaps if I can. Clients don't know about this stuff. They don't even know enough to ask. I find a lot of IT people don't even think about stuff like that.

I'll ask a client if they back up their data and how often. If they talk to their IT guy? If they say, "Once a night," I ask, "Okay, what if it was the middle of the day and you go down? You lose all your data." I ask if they have ever heard of SQL log shipping. They start stuttering because they don't know how to set it up.

It would be great if Microsoft was more up-front about how to do that stuff. It's a great feature.

On a scale of one to ten, I would probably give SQL Server a nine. I don't give anybody a perfect score, certainly not in the technology world. Oracle is out there. NetSuite is just giving it away. You have a lot of other applications not running on SQL, like Intacct, who are creating proprietary, non-Microsoft things to come against what Microsoft is offering like interoperability with different applications. They are really pushing a different environment. I think Microsoft is going to win, but Sage is not a small company.

We have all these big titans fighting each other.

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.

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.

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.

In my data warehousing project, I use SQL Server alongside Power BI. SQL Server serves as the data storage solution, while Power BI is used for data visualization.

The most valuable features for database management in SQL Server are SQL Server Management Studio and Visual Studio Code with its administration capabilities.

Improvement in SQL Server should focus on lowering the high cost, especially for environments requiring extensive CPU and memory usage like data warehousing. While existing features are great, affordability is a significant concern, particularly for enterprise licenses. Additionally, enhancements in managing availability groups and clustering could be beneficial.

I have been working with SQL Server for 20 years.

I would rate the stability of the solution as a nine out of ten.

SQL Server is highly scalable, but the scalability comes with a price tag. Additionally, for on-premise deployments, hardware purchase is necessary, which can be a limiting factor. I would rate the scalability of the solution as an eight out of ten. We have approximately 500 users at our company.

My experience with SQL Server's customer support has been positive in the past, but recently, I have noticed a decline in responsiveness, and now I would rate them as an eight out of ten instead of a perfect ten. While I used to receive prompt answers to my inquiries, I have had a question pending for several weeks now without a resolution. It seems that Microsoft's focus on Azure may be impacting their support for on-premise solutions like SQL Server.

Positive

The initial setup of SQL Server is straightforward and user-friendly and I would rate it at around an eight out of ten for ease of use. While the basic setup is simple, additional considerations for security may require some tweaking. 

Deploying a SQL Server for testing purposes typically takes around ten minutes, while for production, it can take an entire day due to the additional tweaking required for optimal performance and security.

SQL Server is generally more expensive than other solutions. I would rate the price of the enterprise version of SQL Server as a ten out of ten for being very expensive compared to the standard version. The enterprise version costs approximately 20 times more than the standard version.

We use SQL Server Availability Groups for high availability. It supports our requirements well and is preferred over cluster solutions for its effectiveness.

SQL Server offers advanced security features like data masking, which allows users to restrict access to specific columns, enhancing data privacy and control. This capability is particularly useful for protecting sensitive information from even database administrators.

SQL Server is the primary technology we use, tightly integrated with our existing IT infrastructure and applications. We rely on Microsoft products for seamless compatibility and avoid unnecessary complexity by sticking to a single vendor ecosystem.

My recommendation for using SQL Server is that it is a stable and versatile option with a lot of capabilities. However, there are cheaper alternatives available on the internet that offer similar performance. It is essential to consider whether the cost difference justifies the added performance of SQL Server, especially when cheaper options can achieve comparable results with slightly slower hardware.

Overall, I would rate SQL Server as an eight out of ten.

SQL Server is used to establish secure storage and protect databases from potential vulnerabilities, including those originating from Slack.

The most valuable aspect is the ability to use jobs and various functions to accomplish specific tasks, which cannot be achieved with standard procedures alone. This allows for a combination of features and functionalities to be employed.

I have experience working with SQL Server 2016 and older versions, including handling JSON data. Initially, I found the JSON capabilities to be less helpful, but over time, they have greatly improved. 

SQL Server now offers extensive capabilities for working with various forms of data, particularly when communicating with text, such as in JSON format. 

I particularly prefer working with these features on Azure, as it provides numerous possibilities, especially in the field of business intelligence (BI). Additionally, the serverless platform offered by Azure is highly beneficial and makes tasks easier to manage.

I have not seen significant returns thus far, but I am eager to enhance my experience by transitioning to work in Azure. This shift to Azure is something I am motivated to improve upon.

I have been working with SQL Server since 2018.

We have not had any issues with the stability of SQL Server.

Scalability is dependent on memory.

The matter at hand pertains to whether we are discussing an issue in general or specifically in the context of on-premises environments. However, it is clear that memory and capacity are significant factors in both scenarios. 

Proper management of memory and capacity is essential to ensure smooth system operation and prevent any performance or stability issues. 

As a result, it is essential to handle these issues completely and appropriately in order to meet the system's requirements.

I have not contacted technical support.

The installation process is not complex, but it requires attention to detail in terms of selecting the necessary services and configuring the Cisco server. 

This ensures a proper setup and a tangible model for effective management. While it may not be complicated, it is important to choose the appropriate features during installation. 

Working with ID was not my primary focus; however, I have had the opportunity to work with it for several companies.

It can take an hour to an hour and a half to deploy.

Maintaining it is more challenging than the initial setup. One of the main concerns is ensuring sufficient memory allocation. The default capacity is typically set around sixty, but it can be increased if needed. If there is insufficient memory, it can lead to server downtime and cancellation of transactions, as exceeding the memory limit poses a risk. Therefore, it becomes crucial to address this issue by allocating more memory resources. Additionally, backups and restores play a significant role in ensuring data safety and recovery in case of any issues.

For a brief period, approximately one year before 2018, I had experience working with the open-source version of SQL Server. During that time, I found SQL Server to be the preferred choice, in my opinion.

I developed an application for specific purposes related to McDonough. Using Microsoft SQL Server, I constructed the entire database and implemented supporting stored procedures. This application was commissioned by the European Union to enhance government institutions and similar entities.

Additionally, I worked on financial-related stored procedures specifically related to Serbia Card, as part of a project for the USA.

We acted as a subcontractor for S&P within your company. I have extensive experience in SQL Server, particularly within the Microsoft environment.

They should think twice before they do anything and double-check. Definitely.

I have explored different options such as SonicWall and open-source solutions, but my preference lies with SQL Server. I find SQL Server to be fantastic, as it provides comprehensive functionality and makes tasks incredibly easy. 

Working with Postgres is also simpler compared to other databases like Oracle. Perhaps my familiarity with Excel has made SQL Server more intuitive for me. While I understand that Oracle is known for its complexity, I appreciate that its code and syntax bear similarities. 

Overall, I have a strong affinity for Microsoft products.

I would rate SQL Server a ten out of ten.

We are consultants and users of this solution and we deploy both on cloud and on-prem. The primary use case of this solution is for its Health Check feature. I'm the company owner and CIO.

We assist companies to improve the performance of their servers. We're generally able to improve performance by 40%. 

I like the Always On tool which improves the SQL server availability. We cross-link servers with Oracle, MySQL and other platforms using PolyBase as a service to join with big data systems like Spark.

I think the treatment of database storage could be improved. There is also an intermediate locked file that prevents users from inserting or writing something in the database that slows things down. I'd like to see the Perform Volume Maintenance Task made available for locked files. It would mean that the SQL server can directly grow files. Without it, you have to go to the local system account, which can disrupt users. It's connected to the local security policy. 

I've been using this solution for 20 years. 

This solution has fantastic stability. 

The scalability is great, and you can use several servers concurrently without using duplication services. Our company is small but we manage around 30,000 users. We have 10 people involved in maintenance and deployment. 

We are part of the Microsoft team in Spain and sometimes we have to call support with a specific question but not very often. In the past 12 months I've only made contact a couple of times. 

I previously used Informix DB because Linux was not the best tool for enterprise when I began working in the industry. Microsoft was working on new technologies and when they came out with SQL I switched to it. I've had the certification on SQL for several years already. 

The initial setup is relatively easy but it depends on the situation, and sometimes requires some planning. You can configure SQL after you've deployed on cloud. Implementation can take some time because it's not just the installation of the SQL server which can be done in less than an hour. The implementation of the database systems can take several days or weeks depending on the organization. Our consultants have more than 12 years of experience working as DBAs, so we carry out the installation. 

In a standard package, you need to buy two core packs. If you need four core packs the price is around € 8,000. There are more options in the cloud where fees are around € 60 a month. The cost is scaled and if you're deploying in the cloud you need to buy a machine infrastructure as a service. We only sell the license across the cross solution provider (CSP) program. If you have less than 25 users, you can buy an SQL standard per server license where the cost is around €1,200 approximately.

I rate this solution 10 out of 10.