5 ms·

My boss insisted on the switch from oracle to mssql. Because "you can't trust open source for business software". Oh the pain

gigatexal 2y ago
So from one expensive vendor to another? Your boss seems smart. ;-) What’s the rationale? What do you gain?
- on_the_train 2y ago
  Exactly. Supposedly the paid solution ensures long term support. The most fun part is that our customers need to buy these database licenses, so it directly reduces our own pay. Say no to non-technical (or rational) managers :<
  - remram 2y ago
    Did you not pay for Oracle?
    - on_the_train 2y ago
      We pay, but what hurts is that our customers need to pay, too. For both oracle and ms of course
- systems 2y ago
  Well, from one VERY expensive vendor, to another considerably less expensive vendor Also, MSSQL have few things going for it, and surprisingly no one seem to be even trying to catch up - Their BI Stacks (PowerBI, SSAS) - Their Database Development (SDK) ( https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/tools/sql-database-projects/sql-database-projects?view=sql-server-ver16 ) The MSSQL BI stack is unmatched , SSAS is the top star of BI cubes and the second option is not even close SSRS is ok, SSIS is passable , but still both are very decent PowerBI and family is also the best option for Mid to large (not FAANG large, but just normal large) companies And finally the GEM that is database projects, you can program your DB changes declaratively, there is nothing like this in the market and again, no one is even trying The easiest platformt todo evolutionary DB development is MS SQL I really wish someone will implement DB Projects (dacpac) for Postgresql
  - manishsharan 2y ago
    MS Azure SQL on is very cheap compared to any other self hosted database including PG and MS SQL. Unless they running a super heavy workload , this solution will meet most business requirements. But this is also a gateway drug for cloud addiction.
    - kjax 2y ago
      After scanning the Azure and AWS pricing pages and calculators for comparably speced Azure Manged SQL and Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instances, AWS's RDS comes out at about 1/3 the price of Azure Managed SQL. This matches my experience with deployments on AWS and Azure. Both are managed db instances, but Azure's is consistently more expensive for comparable offerings on AWS or GCP.
      - AlfeG 2y ago
        Is there any analog for Azure SQL Elastic Pools for Postgres anywhere? We pay in total something around 600 bucks to manage around 250 databases in MSSQL servers (with failover for prod databases, DTU based model) We pay for log analytics more then we pay for Sql Servers. Those Elastic Pools is a blocker for us on the way to migrate to Postgres from MSSQL...
        ilkhan4 2y ago
        It's been a while since I've looked at elastic pools in Azure, but maybe Neon (https://neon.tech/ https://neon.tech/) or recently Nile (https://www.thenile.dev/ https://www.thenile.dev/) might work in terms of spinning up a bunch of separate logical DBs with shared compute/storage.
        nikita 2y ago
        (neon ceo). We have lots of examples of this. Here is one with Retool. https://neon.tech/blog/how-retool-uses-retool-and-the-neon-api-to-manage-300k-postgres-databases https://neon.tech/blog/how-retool-uses-retool-and-the-neon-a...
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
  A boolean column type.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  Microsoft is way less likely to sue you and a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper than Oracle. Besides, managing Microsoft licensing is a bliss close to Oracle's. And yeah, MSSQL is much better in almost every way than Oracle. If you only compare those two, it's a non-brainier.
jmull 2y ago
Well, you can't necessarily trust open source for business software. The more deeply your business depends on something, the more careful you need to be when selecting the source for that something. (And the db is often very deeply depended on.) You want to see why their long-term incentives align with your own needs. But a revenue stream is just one way to do this, and not a perfect one. (Case in point: Oracle.) In my experience, SQL Server isn't bad though. I know a couple commercial products that started with SQL Server in the late '90s and remain happy with it now. The cost hasn't been a problem and they like the support and evolution of the product. They find they can adopt newer versions and features when they need to without too much pain/cost/time. (Not that I don't think Postgres is generally a better green-field pick, though, and even more so porting away from Oracle.)
bityard 2y ago
I ran into a lot of that 20 years ago, surprised to hear it's still a thing at all given how it's basically common knowledge that most of the Internet and Cloud run on open source software. I once met an older gentleman who was doing IT work for a defense contractor. He seemed nice enough. We were making small talk and I happened to mention that I had recently installed Linux on my computer at home. He tone changed almost immediately and he started ranting about how Linux was pirated source code, stolen from Microsoft, all of it contains viruses, etc. He was talking about the SCO vs Linux lawsuits but of course got absolutely ALL of the details wrong, like which companies were even involved in the lawsuits. He was so far off the deep end that I didn't even try to correct him, I just nodded and smiled and said I was actually running late to be somewhere else...
throw351203910 2y ago
What your boss doesn't realize is your business already depends on FOSS. Here are a few examples: - Do you use any cloud provider? Those platforms are built on top of open source software: Linux, nginx (e.g Cloudflare's edge servers before the rust rewrite), ha-proxy (AWS ELB), etc - Either the software your business builds or depends on probably uses open source libraries (e.g: libc, etc) - The programming languages your business uses directly or indirectly are probably open source My point is that folks that make these kinds of statements have no clue how their software is built or what kind software their business actually depends on.
baq 2y ago
mssql is a great rdbms. t-sql is... different... in certain places but all in all if cost isn't a big issue you really can't go wrong by picking it.
WuxiFingerHold 2y ago
SQL Server (MSSQL) is not bad at all, just expensive. The part that your boss doesn't trust Postgres is hilarious, of course.

gigatexal 2y ago

So from one expensive vendor to another? Your boss seems smart. ;-) What’s the rationale? What do you gain?

on_the_train 2y ago
Exactly. Supposedly the paid solution ensures long term support. The most fun part is that our customers need to buy these database licenses, so it directly reduces our own pay. Say no to non-technical (or rational) managers :<
- remram 2y ago
  Did you not pay for Oracle?
  - on_the_train 2y ago
    We pay, but what hurts is that our customers need to pay, too. For both oracle and ms of course
systems 2y ago
Well, from one VERY expensive vendor, to another considerably less expensive vendor Also, MSSQL have few things going for it, and surprisingly no one seem to be even trying to catch up - Their BI Stacks (PowerBI, SSAS) - Their Database Development (SDK) ( https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/tools/sql-database-projects/sql-database-projects?view=sql-server-ver16 ) The MSSQL BI stack is unmatched , SSAS is the top star of BI cubes and the second option is not even close SSRS is ok, SSIS is passable , but still both are very decent PowerBI and family is also the best option for Mid to large (not FAANG large, but just normal large) companies And finally the GEM that is database projects, you can program your DB changes declaratively, there is nothing like this in the market and again, no one is even trying The easiest platformt todo evolutionary DB development is MS SQL I really wish someone will implement DB Projects (dacpac) for Postgresql
- manishsharan 2y ago
  MS Azure SQL on is very cheap compared to any other self hosted database including PG and MS SQL. Unless they running a super heavy workload , this solution will meet most business requirements. But this is also a gateway drug for cloud addiction.
  - kjax 2y ago
    After scanning the Azure and AWS pricing pages and calculators for comparably speced Azure Manged SQL and Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instances, AWS's RDS comes out at about 1/3 the price of Azure Managed SQL. This matches my experience with deployments on AWS and Azure. Both are managed db instances, but Azure's is consistently more expensive for comparable offerings on AWS or GCP.
    - AlfeG 2y ago
      Is there any analog for Azure SQL Elastic Pools for Postgres anywhere? We pay in total something around 600 bucks to manage around 250 databases in MSSQL servers (with failover for prod databases, DTU based model) We pay for log analytics more then we pay for Sql Servers. Those Elastic Pools is a blocker for us on the way to migrate to Postgres from MSSQL...
      - ilkhan4 2y ago
        It's been a while since I've looked at elastic pools in Azure, but maybe Neon (https://neon.tech/ https://neon.tech/) or recently Nile (https://www.thenile.dev/ https://www.thenile.dev/) might work in terms of spinning up a bunch of separate logical DBs with shared compute/storage.
        nikita 2y ago
        (neon ceo). We have lots of examples of this. Here is one with Retool. https://neon.tech/blog/how-retool-uses-retool-and-the-neon-api-to-manage-300k-postgres-databases https://neon.tech/blog/how-retool-uses-retool-and-the-neon-a...
0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
A boolean column type.
marcosdumay 2y ago
Microsoft is way less likely to sue you and a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper than Oracle. Besides, managing Microsoft licensing is a bliss close to Oracle's. And yeah, MSSQL is much better in almost every way than Oracle. If you only compare those two, it's a non-brainier.

jmull 2y ago

Well, you can't necessarily trust open source for business software. The more deeply your business depends on something, the more careful you need to be when selecting the source for that something. (And the db is often very deeply depended on.) You want to see why their long-term incentives align with your own needs. But a revenue stream is just one way to do this, and not a perfect one. (Case in point: Oracle.) In my experience, SQL Server isn't bad though. I know a couple commercial products that started with SQL Server in the late '90s and remain happy with it now. The cost hasn't been a problem and they like the support and evolution of the product. They find they can adopt newer versions and features when they need to without too much pain/cost/time. (Not that I don't think Postgres is generally a better green-field pick, though, and even more so porting away from Oracle.)

bityard 2y ago

I ran into a lot of that 20 years ago, surprised to hear it's still a thing at all given how it's basically common knowledge that most of the Internet and Cloud run on open source software. I once met an older gentleman who was doing IT work for a defense contractor. He seemed nice enough. We were making small talk and I happened to mention that I had recently installed Linux on my computer at home. He tone changed almost immediately and he started ranting about how Linux was pirated source code, stolen from Microsoft, all of it contains viruses, etc. He was talking about the SCO vs Linux lawsuits but of course got absolutely ALL of the details wrong, like which companies were even involved in the lawsuits. He was so far off the deep end that I didn't even try to correct him, I just nodded and smiled and said I was actually running late to be somewhere else...

throw351203910 2y ago

What your boss doesn't realize is your business already depends on FOSS. Here are a few examples: - Do you use any cloud provider? Those platforms are built on top of open source software: Linux, nginx (e.g Cloudflare's edge servers before the rust rewrite), ha-proxy (AWS ELB), etc - Either the software your business builds or depends on probably uses open source libraries (e.g: libc, etc) - The programming languages your business uses directly or indirectly are probably open source My point is that folks that make these kinds of statements have no clue how their software is built or what kind software their business actually depends on.

baq 2y ago

mssql is a great rdbms. t-sql is... different... in certain places but all in all if cost isn't a big issue you really can't go wrong by picking it.

WuxiFingerHold 2y ago

SQL Server (MSSQL) is not bad at all, just expensive. The part that your boss doesn't trust Postgres is hilarious, of course.