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Odd tone to the blog post. That being said, I'm always a bit surprised that SQL Server doesn't get the recognition that (IMO) it deserves. It is a pretty solid

Odd tone to the blog post. That being said, I'm always a bit surprised that SQL Server doesn't get the recognition that (IMO) it deserves. It is a pretty solid product. I was in a position to use it for years and saw it mature such that it eventually replaced legacy DB2/Adabas environments. It performed admirably and for a fraction of the price. If the powers that be hadn't decided Oracle at all costs (and literally at all costs) against my counsel, they would have saved a lot of $$ and I might still be working there.

egwor 14y ago
the problem is that you have to install hotfixes and windows patches every weekend to keep the thing running.
- mey 14y ago
  Keep it running no, keep it secure yes. That is true of any production system, regardless of vendor, or should be. Your system/business setups simply reflect this, either through clustering or planned outages. Not sure why I'm providing a rational opinion to a snarky jab at Mircosoft, but imo, they have made fantastic progress on the security front over the past decade.
  - drivebyacct2 14y ago
    Because admining Windows still feels like an enormous nuisance compared to admining a Linux box? I've heard Server 2012 adds more capabilities that would make it administerable more like a Linux sysadmin would expect. Sorry if I offended the point-and-click "sysadmins".
  - T-Winsnes 14y ago
    I find that updating a Windows server often requires a reboot, while other systems can usually get away with restarting the service that is being patched.
- purephase 14y ago
  Once a month actually, and only if the patches were applicable. It really is not as bad in the MS world as you think. They made great strides in both stability and security over the past 8-9 years in the server OS area. And, I say this as someone who has literally nothing to do with them on a daily basis anymore.
stephenhuey 14y ago
Back in 2004, a seasoned DBA was contracted to help our team set up an Oracle cluster. He said SQL Server was pretty good, but that the problem was you had to run it on Windows. In the past, he'd been in a team of 3 DBAs who kept 100 Oracle instances running on Solaris machines in a large company. After that, he helped a small financial company with their big database problems. They had 3 full-time DBAs constantly firefighting because they were running 3 Oracle instances on Windows. After he switched them over to Linux, their problems declined dramatically. Anecdotal, but that guy saved us a lot of time and effort because he knew what he was doing, and I'd take his real life experiences over any sales rep! I'd probably also enjoy the awesome SQL Server GUI in a *nix environment if I could have that. :)
- jspaur 14y ago
  So 2004...that experience was probably running a mix of Windows Server 2000/NT. OS's that would be teenagers/in college now. It really is a different world in the server OS space (especially in the enterprise datacenter space) now.
  - jlarocco 14y ago
    Well, Oracle didn't stop working on their database back in 2004, either. And they didn't have to waste time playing catch up... I don't understand all the hate for Oracle. They sell products that work well and they make a lot of money doing it. What's the problem?
    - toyg 14y ago
      > products that work well That's... debatable. The problem is that the Oracle portfolio is now so vast, after a decade of acquisitions targeted at "surrounding" SAP, that quality levels are very uneven across the board. Some products require constant attention from specialized personnel or they'll blow up in your face, the learning curve is always very steep, and some of them are just full of bugs. And I say that as one of those specialized folks. Also, their licensing terms (and the salespeople who espouse and enforce them) are unabashedly, shamelessly greedy.
edge17 14y ago
that's funny that you noticed the tone. It's the tone of database guys firing shots at database guys. in another life i sat through lots of these kinds of meetings
- jamesaguilar 14y ago
  You wouldn't think they'd let the database guys write the blog posts though. ;) Especially at Microsoft, home to some of the most sanitized corp-speak I've ever read.
  - xradionut 14y ago
    There's plenty of MS SQL Server blogs, but the truly good ones are independent.
- jspaur 14y ago
  Agreed (and as mentioned below), a bit of a rally the troops when it comes to re-selling partners and field sales.
meaty 14y ago
I'm always a bit surprised that SQL Server doesn't get the recognition that (IMO) it deserves As someone who has spent 13 years with it and has dragged himself through multiple certification cycles, the reason it doesn't get recognition is that it's an insanely deep money pit when you have to scale it. By the time you've forked out for the (now suddenly per core rather than CPU[1]!) enterprise license, all the 3rd party backup and restore tools, numerous windows licenses and had your arse audited for license compliance, you're down a lot of cash. Not only that, from a technical perspective, it's an absolute bastard to administer, particularly if something goes snap. It requires significantly more meat popsicles to run than a similar sized Postgres or MySQL cluster. To be honest, it's cheaper to solve all the problems that SQL Server solves at an architectural level these days. It's no longer something special (was it ever?). The only thing going for it these days is that it's better than Oracle. [1] This properly fucks us on the 2008->2012 upgrade cycle as our primary machines are 4x 8 core Xeons. So that's from 4 licensable CPUs to 32 licensable CPUs. We have 4 of those machines. Bastards!
- incision 14y ago
  >By the time you've forked out for the (now suddenly per core rather than CPU[1]!) enterprise license, all the 3rd party backup and restore tools, numerous windows licenses and had your arse audited for license compliance, you're down a lot of cash. SQL Server licensing is pure madness. I will never forget sitting across from a cadre of regional level Microsoft folks who had just finished explaining the intricacies of SQL virtualization licensing. The seemingly straightforward design we envisioned to cost perhaps $120K under any sort of reasonable, logical licensing structure attached to per socket price of SQL would actually run upwards of $1.3M to properly comply with the Microsoft licensing terms. It wasn't even the absurd total or the ridiculous terms that were so memorable. It was the fact the Microsoft folks seemed to be as shocked at our incredulity as we were at their terms. I got the impression they weren't used to providing more than "It's cheaper than Oracle" as justification to receive millions of dollars.
  - duncan_bayne 14y ago
    At least you got a number. A company I worked for back in New Zealand had a particularly odd architecture which didn't fit neatly into any of the SQL Server licensing structures at the time. We asked MS what sort of licences (& how many) we'd need to purchase and were still waiting for an answer months later when I left.
runT1ME 14y ago
Interesting. I'm consulting on a project for a heavy traffic website and the SQL Server was chosen. I'm not the DB expert on the project, but when I asked about SQL Server's equivalent to Oracle RAC, I was told there wasn't anything like that. From our experience on the project SQL Server's clustering technology was pretty amateur compared to Oracle's...

egwor 14y ago

the problem is that you have to install hotfixes and windows patches every weekend to keep the thing running.

mey 14y ago
Keep it running no, keep it secure yes. That is true of any production system, regardless of vendor, or should be. Your system/business setups simply reflect this, either through clustering or planned outages. Not sure why I'm providing a rational opinion to a snarky jab at Mircosoft, but imo, they have made fantastic progress on the security front over the past decade.
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  Because admining Windows still feels like an enormous nuisance compared to admining a Linux box? I've heard Server 2012 adds more capabilities that would make it administerable more like a Linux sysadmin would expect. Sorry if I offended the point-and-click "sysadmins".
- T-Winsnes 14y ago
  I find that updating a Windows server often requires a reboot, while other systems can usually get away with restarting the service that is being patched.
purephase 14y ago
Once a month actually, and only if the patches were applicable. It really is not as bad in the MS world as you think. They made great strides in both stability and security over the past 8-9 years in the server OS area. And, I say this as someone who has literally nothing to do with them on a daily basis anymore.

stephenhuey 14y ago

Back in 2004, a seasoned DBA was contracted to help our team set up an Oracle cluster. He said SQL Server was pretty good, but that the problem was you had to run it on Windows. In the past, he'd been in a team of 3 DBAs who kept 100 Oracle instances running on Solaris machines in a large company. After that, he helped a small financial company with their big database problems. They had 3 full-time DBAs constantly firefighting because they were running 3 Oracle instances on Windows. After he switched them over to Linux, their problems declined dramatically. Anecdotal, but that guy saved us a lot of time and effort because he knew what he was doing, and I'd take his real life experiences over any sales rep! I'd probably also enjoy the awesome SQL Server GUI in a *nix environment if I could have that. :)

jspaur 14y ago
So 2004...that experience was probably running a mix of Windows Server 2000/NT. OS's that would be teenagers/in college now. It really is a different world in the server OS space (especially in the enterprise datacenter space) now.
- jlarocco 14y ago
  Well, Oracle didn't stop working on their database back in 2004, either. And they didn't have to waste time playing catch up... I don't understand all the hate for Oracle. They sell products that work well and they make a lot of money doing it. What's the problem?
  - toyg 14y ago
    > products that work well That's... debatable. The problem is that the Oracle portfolio is now so vast, after a decade of acquisitions targeted at "surrounding" SAP, that quality levels are very uneven across the board. Some products require constant attention from specialized personnel or they'll blow up in your face, the learning curve is always very steep, and some of them are just full of bugs. And I say that as one of those specialized folks. Also, their licensing terms (and the salespeople who espouse and enforce them) are unabashedly, shamelessly greedy.

edge17 14y ago

that's funny that you noticed the tone. It's the tone of database guys firing shots at database guys. in another life i sat through lots of these kinds of meetings

jamesaguilar 14y ago
You wouldn't think they'd let the database guys write the blog posts though. ;) Especially at Microsoft, home to some of the most sanitized corp-speak I've ever read.
- xradionut 14y ago
  There's plenty of MS SQL Server blogs, but the truly good ones are independent.
jspaur 14y ago
Agreed (and as mentioned below), a bit of a rally the troops when it comes to re-selling partners and field sales.

meaty 14y ago

I'm always a bit surprised that SQL Server doesn't get the recognition that (IMO) it deserves As someone who has spent 13 years with it and has dragged himself through multiple certification cycles, the reason it doesn't get recognition is that it's an insanely deep money pit when you have to scale it. By the time you've forked out for the (now suddenly per core rather than CPU[1]!) enterprise license, all the 3rd party backup and restore tools, numerous windows licenses and had your arse audited for license compliance, you're down a lot of cash. Not only that, from a technical perspective, it's an absolute bastard to administer, particularly if something goes snap. It requires significantly more meat popsicles to run than a similar sized Postgres or MySQL cluster. To be honest, it's cheaper to solve all the problems that SQL Server solves at an architectural level these days. It's no longer something special (was it ever?). The only thing going for it these days is that it's better than Oracle. [1] This properly fucks us on the 2008->2012 upgrade cycle as our primary machines are 4x 8 core Xeons. So that's from 4 licensable CPUs to 32 licensable CPUs. We have 4 of those machines. Bastards!

incision 14y ago
>By the time you've forked out for the (now suddenly per core rather than CPU[1]!) enterprise license, all the 3rd party backup and restore tools, numerous windows licenses and had your arse audited for license compliance, you're down a lot of cash. SQL Server licensing is pure madness. I will never forget sitting across from a cadre of regional level Microsoft folks who had just finished explaining the intricacies of SQL virtualization licensing. The seemingly straightforward design we envisioned to cost perhaps $120K under any sort of reasonable, logical licensing structure attached to per socket price of SQL would actually run upwards of $1.3M to properly comply with the Microsoft licensing terms. It wasn't even the absurd total or the ridiculous terms that were so memorable. It was the fact the Microsoft folks seemed to be as shocked at our incredulity as we were at their terms. I got the impression they weren't used to providing more than "It's cheaper than Oracle" as justification to receive millions of dollars.
- duncan_bayne 14y ago
  At least you got a number. A company I worked for back in New Zealand had a particularly odd architecture which didn't fit neatly into any of the SQL Server licensing structures at the time. We asked MS what sort of licences (& how many) we'd need to purchase and were still waiting for an answer months later when I left.

runT1ME 14y ago

Interesting. I'm consulting on a project for a heavy traffic website and the SQL Server was chosen. I'm not the DB expert on the project, but when I asked about SQL Server's equivalent to Oracle RAC, I was told there wasn't anything like that. From our experience on the project SQL Server's clustering technology was pretty amateur compared to Oracle's...