Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) vs. Oracle Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server

If your application needs a relational data store and uses other AWS services, AWS RDS is a no-brainer. It offers all the traditional database features, makes it a snap to set up, creates cross-region replication, has advanced security, built-in monitoring, and much more at a very good price. You can also set up streaming to a data lake using various other AWS services on your RDS.

Incentivized

We migrated from NoSQL to an Oracle database. One of the reasons was robust backup and recovery options available in the Oracle database, which provide zero data loss. A transactional database like Oracle is a better fit for our use case than NoSQL. On a large scale, deployment was evaluated as a cheaper option than the NoSQL engine. This conclusion came even after considering Oracle license is expensive.

Incentivized

Microsoft SQL is ubiquitous, while MySQL runs under the hood all over the place. Microsoft SQL is the platform taught in colleges and certification courses and is the one most likely to be used by businesses because it is backed by Microsoft. Its interface is friendly (well, as pleasant as SQL can be) and has been used by so many for so long that resources are freely available if you encounter any issues.

Incentivized

• Automated Database Management: We use it for streamlining routine tasks like software patching and database backups.
• Scalability on Demand: we use it to handle traffic spikes, scaling both vertically and horizontally.
• Database Engine Compatibility: It works amazingly with multiple database engines used by different departments within our organization including MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and Oracle.
• Monitoring: It covers our extensive monitoring and logging, and also has great compatibility with Amazon CloudWatch

Incentivized

• Supports most of the Operating Systems like Unix, Linux and Windows Server.
• It works well in high load environment under intense parallel transactions setup.
• Highly reliable DBMS, especially RAC is very much reliable.
• Well managed and predictable release of security patches.
• We have highly scaled it from on-prem to a cloud cluster environment for our product.
• One of the best-performing DBMSs on Linux machines under test delivers high throughput (QPS).

Incentivized

• Easy to configure and use with Visual Studio and Dot Net
• Easy integration with MSBI to perform data analysis
• Data Security
• Easy to understand and use
• Very easy to export database and tables in the form of SQL query or a script

Incentivized

• It is a little difficult to configure and connect to an RDS instance. The integration with ECS can be made more seamless.
• Exploring features within RDS is not very easy and intuitive. Either a human friendly documentation should be added or the User Interface be made intuitive so that people can explore and find features on their own.
• There should be tools to analyze cost and minimize it according to the usage.

Incentivized

• The memory demand and management makes it impossible to run it in a container.
• It is hard to perform local unit testing with Oracle even using the personal edition (aggressive all the available memory grab for itself).
• Lack of built in database migrations (e.g. as Flyway).
• The need to install the Oracle client in addition to its drivers.
• The cost of running it, especially in the Cloud.
• Comes with very spartan community grade client/management tools whereas the commercial offerings tend to demand a premium price.

Incentivized

• Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise edition has a high cost but is the only edition which supports SQL Always On Availability Groups. It would be nice to include this feature in the Standard version.
• Licensing of Microsoft SQL Server is a quite complex matter, it would be good to simplify licensing in the future. For example, per core vs per user CAL licensing, as well as complex licensing scenarios in the Cloud and on Edge locations.
• It would be good to include native tools for converting Oracle, DB2, Postgresql and MySQL/MariaDB databases (schema and data) for import into Microsoft SQL Server.

Incentivized

We do renew our use of Amazon Relational Database Service. We don't have any problems faced with RDS in place. RDS has taken away lot of overhead of hosting database, managing the database and keeping a team just to manage database. Even the backup, security and recovery another overhead that has been taken away by RDS. So, we will keep on using RDS.

Incentivized

There is a lot of sunk cost in a product like Oracle 12c. It is doing a great job, it would not provide us much benefit to switch to another product even if it did the same thing due to the work involved in making such a switch. It would not be cost effective.

Incentivized

We understand that the Microsoft SQL Server will continue to advance, offering the same robust and reliable platform while adding new features that enable us, as a software center, to create a superior product. That provides excellent performance while reducing the hardware requirements and the total cost of ownership of our solution.

Incentivized

I've been using AWS Relational Database Services in several projects in different environments and from the AWS products, maybe this one together to EC2 are my favourite. They deliver what they promise. Reliable, fast, easy and with a fair price (in comparison to commercial products which have obscure license agreements).

Incentivized

Many of the powerful options can be auto-configured but there are still many things to take into account at the moment of installing and configuring an Oracle Database, compared with SQL Server or other databases. At the same time, that extra complexity allows for detailed configuration and guarantees performance, scalability, availability and security.

Incentivized

SQL Server mostly 'just works' or generates error messages to help you sort out the trouble. You can usually count on the product to get the job done and keep an eye on your potential mistakes. Interaction with other Microsoft products makes operating as a Windows user pretty straight forward. Digging through the multitude of dialogs and wizards can be a pain, but the answer is usually there somewhere.

Incentivized

Its does not have outages.

Incentivized

SSAS data cubes may some time slow down your Excel reports.

Incentivized

I have only had good experiences in working with AWS support. I will admit that my experience comes from the benefit of having a premium tier of support but even working with free-tier accounts I have not had problems getting help with AWS products when needed. And most often, the docs do a pretty good job of explaining how to operate a service so a quick spin through the docs has been useful in solving problems.

Incentivized

1. I have very good experience with Oracle Database support team. Oracle support team has pool of talented Oracle Analyst resources in different regions. To name a few regions - EMEA, Asia, USA(EST, MST, PST), Australia. Their support staffs are very supportive, well trained, and customer focused. Whenever I open Oracle Sev1 SR(service request), I always get prompt update on my case timely. 2. Oracle has zoom call and chat session option linked to Oracle SR. Whenever you are in Oracle portal - you can chat with the Oracle Analyst who is working on your case. You can request for Oracle zoom call thru which you can share the your problem server screen in no time. This is very nice as it saves lot of time and energy in case you have to follow up with oracle support for your case. 3.Oracle has excellent knowledge base in which all the customer databases critical problems and their solutions are well documented. It is very easy to follow without consulting to support team at first.

Incentivized

We managed to handle most of our problems by looking into Microsoft's official documentation that has everything explained and almost every function has an example that illustrates in detail how a particular functionality works. Just like PowerShell has the ability to show you an example of how some cmdlet works, that is the case also here, and in my opinion, it is a very good practice and I like it.

Incentivized

It was good

Incentivized

the online training & digital content available on the web from AWS was having sufficient information to deploy and run the service

Incentivized

very hands on and detailed training

Incentivized

Overall the implementation went very well and after that everything came out as expected - in terms of performance and scalability. People should always install and upgrade a stable version for production with the latest patch set updates, test properly as much as possible, and should have a backup plan if anything unexpected happens

Other than SQL taking quite a bit of time to actually install there are no problems with installation. Even on hardware that has good performance SQL can still take close to an hour to install a typical server with management and reporting services.

Incentivized

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) stands out among similar products due to its seamless integration with other AWS services, automated backups, and multi-AZ deployments for high availability. Its support for various database engines, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Oracle, provides flexibility. Additionally, RDS offers managed security features, including encryption and IAM integration, enhancing data protection. The pay-as-you-go pricing model makes it cost-effective. Overall, Amazon RDS excels in ease of use, scalability, and a comprehensive feature set, making it a top choice for organizations seeking a reliable and scalable managed relational database service in the cloud.

Because of a rich user base and support for any critical issue, this is one of the best options to choose. In case the project has a TCO issue, it can compromise and choose Postgres as the best alternative. SQL server is also good and easy to code and maintain but performance is not as good as the Oracle

Incentivized

[Microsoft] SQL Server has a much better community and professional support and is overall just a more reliable system with Microsoft behind it. I've used MySQL in the past and SQL Server has just become more comfortable for me and is my go to RDBMS.

Incentivized

SQL server does handle growing demands of a mid sized company.

Incentivized

• The overall cost increases, but we spect this and we can mitigate other risks.
• Is easy to work from the cloud. Is reliable, but we keep our local solution as well where RDS works quite good.
• RDS allow us to focurs on owr objetives instead of the other matters regarding databases.

Incentivized

• Multiple applications can use the same database and still get high performance
• Licensing cost is still a concern compared to the other options available in the market that are very very inexpensive
• Almost a maintenance free database
• Oracle Grid makes life easy in terms of monitoring and managing the databases

Incentivized

• Increased accuracy - We went from multiple users having different versions of an Excel spreadsheet to a single source of truth for our reporting.
• Increased Efficiency - We can now generate reports at any time from a single source rather than multiple users spending their time collating data and generating reports.
• Improved Security - Enterprise level security on a dedicated server rather than financial files on multiple laptop hard drives.

Incentivized