SQL Server Reviews

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. 

We use the latest version.

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

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

Database support could be improved. Oracle provides better support. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The installation is good. 

It took very little time, a couple hours. 

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

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

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

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

Microsoft is fine. They have done a good job.

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

I rate SQL Server as a nine out of ten. 

SQL Server is enterprise database software. It provides the back end for any number of different applications, including web applications, and other types of internal applications, and software-based applications. It also provides a back end for enterprise backup tools. It's incredibly diverse in terms of its use case.

Scalability, cluster ability, ease of use, ease of implementation — these are all great. 

In terms of exceptionally large databases, it doesn't scale as well as Oracle. It scales excellently and it's flexible and it can provide a solution for exceptionally large databases, but it doesn't work as well as Oracle does for this particular use case. The performance starts to drag in the case of exceptionally large databases; especially where there's a lot more feature functionality. With Oracle, there's a lot more tunability.

I have been working with this product for 20 years. 

It's exceptionally stable. The ease of implementation and the ease of use can't be beaten. I think it's outstanding overall.

Scalability-wise, it's outstanding. The one limitation it has is that at the very, very high end of petabytes-sized databases, it doesn't scale as well as Oracle. Still, you're not going to run into very many exceptionally large databases. Almost 100% of the use cases for it scale very well.

Technical support is available for a separate cost. If you don't have a subscription or a support contract, then you don't get support. You'll be stuck with online forums — that's how you'll have to get answers to questions. Assuming you have a support contract with Microsoft, it's outstanding.

The initial setup was straightforward. 

This solution is available at a much lower price point than Oracle. Plus, it includes 99% of the same feature functionality. I'd say it knocks ROI out of the park.

If you're interested in using this product, make sure that you have a good understanding of best practices for database implementation. Make sure to incorporate them in your deployment right off the bat. You won't want to have to go back and have to take production databases down because you have to change the configuration, post-implementation. Make sure you get all of these things done, pre-production implementation.

They've come a long, long way in the 20 years I've been working with them. Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give SQL Server a rating of nine.

SQL Server is used as database software. People who are using .NET and Windows-oriented tools prefer SQL Server.

It is easy to manage for the administrator. It is also easy to use for applications that are Windows-based.

It is a very stable product, and it has got backup and recovery tools.

Its security can be improved. When you look at the Windows environment, it isn't the most secure environment. It is exposed to so many attacks. They continuously need to improve the security of the platform on which it sits.

I have been using this solution for more than ten years.

It is very stable.

It is pretty scalable. You can scale your machine and nodes. Instead of using just one node or one server, you can use multiple servers and then cluster them together for failover and performance. You can also do replication across sites. Currently, we have around 50 users.

We have got support from Microsoft. They are very quick at resolving issues. They are quite good.

We were using different products. 

It is easy to install. It might take 20 or 30 minutes to install.

I installed it myself.

Its price is fine. You have to buy the license and support.

We compared it with Oracle and MySQL. We got a lot of dev inputs, and we also looked at the vendors supplying the solutions. We found SQL Server to be the best and chose it because of the vendor.

I would recommend this solution to others. We would definitely keep on using this solution.

I would rate SQL Server an eight out of ten.

We are a company that produces stock market analytics data and we are working on creating an alerting system for our customers. We use Microsoft SQL Server in our development and I have a lot of experience with it.

In my development role, I store about two gigabytes of data every month.

One of the big advantages of this product is its performance, where it works well when the data is not complex.

If you have a lot of data and you want to perform computations on it, you will have problems and the performance will be degraded.

There are problems when you are dealing with Big Data and it doesn't scale very well. For example, in Hadoop, you can partition your data very well, but in SQL Server, you can't do that. If it could handle horizontal scaling then that would be an improvement.

We experience latency at times when there is a lot of data being processed. In Iran, there is a specific time when all of the markets are open, and a lot of people are using the data to make decisions. Performing actions at that specific time gives us a lot of problems because of limitations in SQL Server. The problem seems to be caused by writing a lot of data to the table at the same time.

Improving the intelligence for managing the SQL server would be very good.

I have been using SQL Server for the past four years, and my company has been using it for approximately seven.

I have seen that this is a very stable product.

We had trouble scaling the solution to handle larger volumes of data. We have been able to scale out by adding CPU power and RAM, but other than by increasing the physical solution, we have not been able to do it very well. For example, we have not been able to do what we have done using Hadoop.

I used Oracle in the past, approximately four years ago. That was stable, but the performance in SQL is very much better nowadays.

The initial setup is very easy.

Our in-house team deployed it by researching how to perform the setup and configuration. As a developer, I just let them know what I need from the product. For example, for my role, I have a lot of writes and I want them to optimize for that situation.

If there are some simple features that I just want to enable, then I can do that myself.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case for this product is as a transaction database and for the provision of rational data through the application-based server. The main application of my current organization is pointing towards the SQL server database and some servers which are later used for data warehousing. So mainly we use it for transaction data and data warehousing. I'm the assistant manager and data administrator, and we are customers of SQL. 

Security is obviously the most valuable feature because I can provide certain logins for a particular level of security and I can provide specific permissions for certain logins. That's a very good feature. I like the user interface as well, it's easy to use. The SSMS Management Studio, which we use to do some work in database file query is a recent feature from 2018 and the SSMS is quite good. It has many features and it also shows the query statistics which I was not getting previously. The other feature I like is the query store which helped me a lot to analyze the data getting hit on the database. 

I'd like to see a simplification of the query optimizer and feel that SQL needs to look into the internal processing of the query because the query optimizer sometimes uses a different query plan, which we don't expect. It is similar to the triggers they have which are used after execution and not before. For example, if I'm running a query, my trigger will be run after the query has executed although I sometimes need the trigger before execution. That's a feature not supported by the product. 

I've been using this solution for four years. 

It is quite scalable compared to other data engines and the latest version has increased support for new technologies, like Python and other languages. It's a big improvement on the previous version. We have 30 to 40 SQL servers installed and they're used for different different applications; internal applications, client applications as well as for ETA tools and reporting purpose. We probably have up to 200 users querying the SQL server of the product on a daily basis.

I'm satisfied with the technical support. Whenever a call is raised to Microsoft they see to it that all our questions are answered properly and in a timely manner. It doesn't take long for things to be resolved. 

The initial setup is very straightforward, just like any typical software where you just click next, next, next, next. You just need to know your environment properly and which exact features you need to install. Deployment takes max one to two hours to install on-premises. Depending on the environment and whether or not you're installing any cluster environment, it will take a couple of hours. To deploy a stand-alone SQL server doesn't take much time. 

I would recommend this solution, particularly for OLTP purposes, the transactional data purpose rather than for warehousing. For data warehousing I think there are better solutions but for the transaction data, for application purposes, SQL Server great.

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

Usually I install an SQL Server as part of something bigger from Microsoft (NAV, CRM, SharePoint, SCCM, SCOM, BizTalk, etc.) or some custom built solution that was designed around this DMBS. 

I also teach in a university. My students admit that SQL Server is quite easy to install and work with if you are a total beginner (compared with others). 

I am not sure, as we have been working with it from the start. Comparing with other database management systems that I tried in other companies, SQL Server is quite easy to install, configure, and maintain. It is also quite reliable in cluster configurations and has helped me to reduce downtime and improve SLAs. If backups and alerts are configured properly, I can also rely on my restoration plan saving my butt more than once. 

Always On is my favorite feature. I do like availability groups and cannot imagine how I lived with them before. 

Microsoft tries to release new features with every version, but I cannot say that they are killer features. Usually these are just "nice to have" stuff. However, SQL Server works and it works just fine. It is really reliable if you don't shoot your own leg. All the basic functionality is 100% bulletproof. 

I like it the way it is, though I would appreciate a dark theme for SQL Server Management Studio and ability to add databases with TDE enabled into availability groups.

I am aware of Connect and Trello pages, and there are a lot of good ideas from other people, most of them are useful only in some very rare scenarios. There are interesting suggestions present, and Microsoft should pay more attention. 

Over the years, there was one service pack and two cumulative updates that were recalled as problematic ones, but otherwise it is very stable system.

Unfortunately, SQL Server cannot be scaled out so easily as some NoSQL solutions. There are some options that may allow it to work with quite enormous workloads. For example, try to google how Stack Overflow is built (yes, it works with SQL Server). They have quite an interesting architecture. 

It depends. The shear number of support specialists is huge. You can get a freshman or a seasoned veteran. Usually, it is tolerable but it might take a while to solve a problem. In my experience, 50% of all problems can be resolved by installation of the latest patch. In 25% of times, it is your own stupidity. The 25% that left are real bugs, exotic configurations, and rocket science-level problems with a real high-load and very specific code and environments. 

It depends how many features you want to implement. Basic stuff is very easy to install, but if you want to implement all the features or deploy a high-load or a clustered environment, it might be tricky. That is why you need a good architect and skilled DBA for something really complicated. 

I have seen everything. It always depends on people skills. To get full performance from the SQL Server you need a well prepared environment and hard team work. 

This is a downside of enterprise Microsoft products. Currently, almost all of my machines are in Azure and I think it is the best way of licensing now (VM+software).

Though I do like the SQL Server, I must say it is very hard to find a good DBA nowadays and having a DBMS without a DBA is like having a car without a driver and skills to drive it yourself. Before choosing or switching to this DMBS, check what kind of workforce is available in your area. 

You may consider Azure SQL Database as a simple alternative, but I would advise it only for small workloads though.

We're primarily using the solution for our health record system.

The use of a solution with SQL Server has helped standardize how we import, store, and report data. It is a standard that many applications use so we are able to buy pre-made solutions instead of having to develop a solution and the data can be moved from application to application easily.

The solution comes at a more effective price than Oracle. 

It's a little bit more advanced than using MySQL or NoSQL.

It's more prevalent in the industry than SQL Postgre.

The initial setup is mostly straightforward.

The product is scalable. 

The stability has been mostly pretty good.

There is a lot of information about the solution readily available online.

Every time Microsoft comes out with a new version, they like to move everything around. Updates are a bit intrusive. For example, it used to be in a certain place and then they update it, and now I can't find it.

Technical support could be better. 

I have been using SQL Server since version 6.4. I have used it with several different companies and help upgrade several versions.

With the versions we have, the solution is quite stable. That's one of the reasons we don't immediately download the latest version. We wait a little bit before we go to the newest version. We want to make sure it's very stable beforehand.

The solution is very easy to scale. We have between 300 to 500 people that use it. 

Microsoft's tech support is really hard to use. I would rather look outside of Microsoft for solutions. When needed we usually pay the one-time fee but only in rare instances where a deep dive is needed to isolate the issue.

Positive

SQL's been the main solution for this company. I have, however, used Oracle in the past with other companies.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

It can be complex depending on what you're trying to do, however, it has a good user base and user support groups, so there's lots of information. If you're trying to do something, likely somebody else has already done it, and you can usually find that information through a user group or a forum, or even on YouTube or Google.

Implementation was a joint effort with our team and the vendor team. Most of the vendor team was India based and was very low-level for best practices and security. We had to clean up a bunch of their generic implementations and correct code.

That is a complex question since there are too many variables that are outside the range of IT to answer.

The pricing is pretty decent. It's less expensive than Oracle. 

While the solution started out really reasonable, it's gotten a little bit more pricey, as Microsoft keeps changing how they want to license it.

Whether you're using it in the cloud or on-premise changes the costs involved. A lot of times it might be more cost-effective to do it in the cloud. Microsoft includes a lot of the licensing in the cloud.

The evaluation was based more on the applications and the solution that the business unit wanted to use which are easier to support if they all use the same database structure. The most common was SQL Server.

We're just a customer and end-user.

We're not using the latest version. We're probably one or two versions behind.

I'd advise new users that you want to know what you're going to use it for. I would say it's more suited to a more midsize or larger company than a mom-and-pop shop - unless they're tying it to some software that uses SQL.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.