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Weird how SQL Server and its Azure variants gets no mention. It dominates in certain sectors. DBEngines ranks it third most popular overall https://db-engines.c

Weird how SQL Server and its Azure variants gets no mention. It dominates in certain sectors. DBEngines ranks it third most popular overall https://db-engines.com/en/ranking https://db-engines.com/en/ranking

patja 2y ago
The fawning over Larry Ellison is also weird.
- cactusfrog 2y ago
  The joke is that his greed/ unwillingness to squeeze margins has made the entire database company ecosystem possible.
RadiozRadioz 2y ago
Lots of people deliberately avoid Microsoft technologies and their whole ecosystem. There's of course interesting stuff happening there, but not enough for those outside the ecosystem to care. It's more a cultural thing than anything else. HN for example largely leans away from MS. It's quite interesting how little overlap there is between the two worlds sometimes. Speaking as one of those people, it's just not my thing, so it's not on my radar at all. There's enough stuff happening outside MS to keep me busy forever.
teej 2y ago
Are people choosing SQL Server independently of the Microsoft ecosystem? My understating is that you typically use it because you’re forced to choose a MS product.
- rawgabbit 2y ago
  SQL Server is a terrific product. And I detest most things Microsoft.
  - breadwinner 2y ago
    Except when you need to scale.
    - bdangubic 2y ago
      this of course is false… it scales fine if you know what you are doing.
      - manquer 2y ago
        This is true for most databases though . How much is out of the box or simple easy to access configuration not magic incantations either you need expensive courses to know or be battle hardened with years of experience is the question really
      - breadwinner 2y ago
        It is of course true... it is well known that SQL Server scales to department level, but Oracle scales to company level. This is true inside Microsoft and Oracle as well. Inside Microsoft, they have a bug database per division but Oracle has a single database for the entire company. Ask people who work at those companies. See also scalability sections in these artcles: https://airbyte.com/data-engineering-resources/oracle-vs-sql-server https://airbyte.com/data-engineering-resources/oracle-vs-sql... https://futuramo.com/blog/oracle-vs-sql-server-head-to-head-comparison/ https://futuramo.com/blog/oracle-vs-sql-server-head-to-head-...
        bdangubic 2y ago
        if it is good for SO it should be good for most :) https://stackoverflow.blog/2008/09/21/what-was-stack-overflow-built-with/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2008/09/21/what-was-stack-overflo...
        breadwinner 2y ago
        You don't believe that web visitors are directly querying SQL Server, right? I can believe they are storing their employee database in SQL Server... they have hundreds of employees.
- Tostino 2y ago
  Agreed with the other person. It's a great database. I wouldn't choose it for a startup over Postgres, but it is extremely capable.
  - olavgg 2y ago
    I would use it if it supported backup/restore over unix pipes / ssh.
    - emmelaich 2y ago
      If it supports backup to a file, you can have it write to a named pipe and from there to wherever. I used this hack for backing up Oracle 30 years ago. Something like 'mknod p backup.dmp; oradump .... file=backup; dd if=backup.dmp | ssh othermachine receiver-process'
      - thayne 2y ago
        Not necessarily. That won't work if the backup uses apis that a pipe doesn't support, like seek or reading back from the file.
        emmelaich 2y ago
        Sure; does any backup actually do that? I guess it's possible. Backups (at least db backups) used to be made with the assumption that the backup device is tape.
stackskipton 2y ago
SRE who deals with some .Net stuff that uses MSSQL but is converting to MySQL. so I feel somewhat qualified to talk about MSSQL. TL;DR: Nothing interesting going on. There is nothing to talk about here. It's boring database engine that powers boring business applications. It's pretty efficient and can scale vertically pretty well. With state of modern hardware, that vertical limit is high enough most people won't encounter it. It's also going the way of Windows Server which is to say, it's being sold but not a ton of work is being done on it. Companies that are still invested in it are likely because they don't care about cost ultimately or cost of switching is too high to greenlight the switch. Anyone who does care about cost like my current company has switched to OSS solutions like PostGres/MySQL/$RandomNoSQLOSSOption. My company switched away when turned into SaaS business and those MSSQL server costs ate into bottom line. This has been happening throughout the ecosystem. Proget which is THE solution for .Net Artifacts is switching to PostGres: https://blog.inedo.com/inedo/so-long-sql-server-thanks-for-all-the-fetch/ https://blog.inedo.com/inedo/so-long-sql-server-thanks-for-a... Also, I saw this article from Brent Ozar, who I see as MSSQL smart person, which basically said if you have the option, just go with PostGres: https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2023/11/the-real-problem-with-sql-servers-licensing-costs/ https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2023/11/the-real-problem-w... It's also worth noting that Microsoft even bought PostGres scaling solution called Citus so they read the writing on the wall: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2019/01/24/microsoft-acquires-citus-data-re-affirming-its-commitment-to-open-source-and-accelerating-azure-postgresql-performance-and-scale/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2019/01/24/microsoft-acquir...
- rawgabbit 2y ago
  I was a big proponent of MSSQL. It is still a good product but I see Microsoft constantly fumbling with new OLAP tools. It is a shame but it seems Microsoft is abandoning MSSQL.
  - datadrivenangel 2y ago
    If it's any consolation, half of the new cloud OLAP tools are basically still MSSQL
- 2y ago
nevf1 2y ago
I have used a lot of RDBMS vs NoSQL solutions and I love SQL Server. I have used and written services consuming/reporting/processing thousands of transactions per second and billions of euro per year. The profiling abilities of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and its query execution insights, the overall performance and scalability, T-SQL support, in-memory OLTP, and temporal tables - I just love SQL Server. I'm not sure if it's just that I learned SQL Server better in college than MySQL, Mongo or Postgres but it's just been an amazing UX dev experience throughout the years. Granted, there's some sticky things in SQL Server, like backups/restores aren't as simple as I'd like, things like distributed transactions aren't straightforward, and obviously the additional licensing cost is a burden particularly for newer/smaller projects, but the juice is worth the squeeze IMHO.

patja 2y ago

The fawning over Larry Ellison is also weird.

cactusfrog 2y ago
The joke is that his greed/ unwillingness to squeeze margins has made the entire database company ecosystem possible.

RadiozRadioz 2y ago

Lots of people deliberately avoid Microsoft technologies and their whole ecosystem. There's of course interesting stuff happening there, but not enough for those outside the ecosystem to care. It's more a cultural thing than anything else. HN for example largely leans away from MS. It's quite interesting how little overlap there is between the two worlds sometimes. Speaking as one of those people, it's just not my thing, so it's not on my radar at all. There's enough stuff happening outside MS to keep me busy forever.

teej 2y ago

Are people choosing SQL Server independently of the Microsoft ecosystem? My understating is that you typically use it because you’re forced to choose a MS product.

rawgabbit 2y ago
SQL Server is a terrific product. And I detest most things Microsoft.
- breadwinner 2y ago
  Except when you need to scale.
  - bdangubic 2y ago
    this of course is false… it scales fine if you know what you are doing.
    - manquer 2y ago
      This is true for most databases though . How much is out of the box or simple easy to access configuration not magic incantations either you need expensive courses to know or be battle hardened with years of experience is the question really
    - breadwinner 2y ago
      It is of course true... it is well known that SQL Server scales to department level, but Oracle scales to company level. This is true inside Microsoft and Oracle as well. Inside Microsoft, they have a bug database per division but Oracle has a single database for the entire company. Ask people who work at those companies. See also scalability sections in these artcles: https://airbyte.com/data-engineering-resources/oracle-vs-sql-server https://airbyte.com/data-engineering-resources/oracle-vs-sql... https://futuramo.com/blog/oracle-vs-sql-server-head-to-head-comparison/ https://futuramo.com/blog/oracle-vs-sql-server-head-to-head-...
      - bdangubic 2y ago
        if it is good for SO it should be good for most :) https://stackoverflow.blog/2008/09/21/what-was-stack-overflow-built-with/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2008/09/21/what-was-stack-overflo...
        breadwinner 2y ago
        You don't believe that web visitors are directly querying SQL Server, right? I can believe they are storing their employee database in SQL Server... they have hundreds of employees.
Tostino 2y ago
Agreed with the other person. It's a great database. I wouldn't choose it for a startup over Postgres, but it is extremely capable.
- olavgg 2y ago
  I would use it if it supported backup/restore over unix pipes / ssh.
  - emmelaich 2y ago
    If it supports backup to a file, you can have it write to a named pipe and from there to wherever. I used this hack for backing up Oracle 30 years ago. Something like 'mknod p backup.dmp; oradump .... file=backup; dd if=backup.dmp | ssh othermachine receiver-process'
    - thayne 2y ago
      Not necessarily. That won't work if the backup uses apis that a pipe doesn't support, like seek or reading back from the file.
      - emmelaich 2y ago
        Sure; does any backup actually do that? I guess it's possible. Backups (at least db backups) used to be made with the assumption that the backup device is tape.

stackskipton 2y ago

SRE who deals with some .Net stuff that uses MSSQL but is converting to MySQL. so I feel somewhat qualified to talk about MSSQL. TL;DR: Nothing interesting going on. There is nothing to talk about here. It's boring database engine that powers boring business applications. It's pretty efficient and can scale vertically pretty well. With state of modern hardware, that vertical limit is high enough most people won't encounter it. It's also going the way of Windows Server which is to say, it's being sold but not a ton of work is being done on it. Companies that are still invested in it are likely because they don't care about cost ultimately or cost of switching is too high to greenlight the switch. Anyone who does care about cost like my current company has switched to OSS solutions like PostGres/MySQL/$RandomNoSQLOSSOption. My company switched away when turned into SaaS business and those MSSQL server costs ate into bottom line. This has been happening throughout the ecosystem. Proget which is THE solution for .Net Artifacts is switching to PostGres: https://blog.inedo.com/inedo/so-long-sql-server-thanks-for-all-the-fetch/ https://blog.inedo.com/inedo/so-long-sql-server-thanks-for-a... Also, I saw this article from Brent Ozar, who I see as MSSQL smart person, which basically said if you have the option, just go with PostGres: https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2023/11/the-real-problem-with-sql-servers-licensing-costs/ https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2023/11/the-real-problem-w... It's also worth noting that Microsoft even bought PostGres scaling solution called Citus so they read the writing on the wall: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2019/01/24/microsoft-acquires-citus-data-re-affirming-its-commitment-to-open-source-and-accelerating-azure-postgresql-performance-and-scale/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2019/01/24/microsoft-acquir...

rawgabbit 2y ago
I was a big proponent of MSSQL. It is still a good product but I see Microsoft constantly fumbling with new OLAP tools. It is a shame but it seems Microsoft is abandoning MSSQL.
- datadrivenangel 2y ago
  If it's any consolation, half of the new cloud OLAP tools are basically still MSSQL
2y ago

nevf1 2y ago

I have used a lot of RDBMS vs NoSQL solutions and I love SQL Server. I have used and written services consuming/reporting/processing thousands of transactions per second and billions of euro per year. The profiling abilities of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and its query execution insights, the overall performance and scalability, T-SQL support, in-memory OLTP, and temporal tables - I just love SQL Server. I'm not sure if it's just that I learned SQL Server better in college than MySQL, Mongo or Postgres but it's just been an amazing UX dev experience throughout the years. Granted, there's some sticky things in SQL Server, like backups/restores aren't as simple as I'd like, things like distributed transactions aren't straightforward, and obviously the additional licensing cost is a burden particularly for newer/smaller projects, but the juice is worth the squeeze IMHO.