PostgreSQL vs. Salesforce Agentforce Sales vs. Microsoft SQL Server

PostgreSQL is best used for structured data, and best when following relational database design principles. I would not use PostgreSQL for large unstructured data such as video, images, sound files, xml documents, web-pages, especially if these files have their own highly variable, internal structure.

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Obviously, for any business, there are two main areas to focus on — the sales path and the service path. Sales Cloud wouldn’t be suited for a company that’s primarily into support services. For those kinds of companies, Salesforce has a different product — Service Cloud. So, for anyone in the support or service space, Sales Cloud isn’t the right fit.

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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.

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• It works well with external data sources and runs on platforms with stable performance.
• Clients can rest assured that their personal information will be safe and secure.
• Many forums discuss setup and usage, and most are free.
• Adding tooling applications to a computer is unlimited.
• PostgreSQL runs on many OS platforms and supports ANSI SQL, stored procedures, and triggers.

• The customizations - We have an organization that operates differently from most companies, so we’ve had to implement quite a few customizations — and Salesforce allows us to do that quite quickly. Most of the time, delays come from dependencies on other internal parties rather than the system itself.
• From my perspective as a consultant, one of the biggest advantages is that everything is in Salesforce — all the details, all in one place. The ability to customize it easily is a big plus; there’s really a lot you can do with it.

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• 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

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• Clearer indications on what is the query plan, to optimize the query
• More out of the box, Postgres specific, SQL functions
• It would be nice to have a more visual aid of the relationship between all tables, but possibly this depend more on the UI used

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• We still need to include the production part. We started using Salesforce to sell the seeds — our inventory is in SAP — and from there we handle sales and track the process of planting, harvesting, selling, and then collecting payments. But we don’t yet manage the earlier production processes, like production planning. We handle allocation, but not full production planning, and that’s an area where we still have room for improvement.

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• 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.

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As a needed software for day to day development activities

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There are days when I wish we hadn't switched, but I know that if we put in the time, we will get to where we want to be with the software and that it has many more capabilities than anything else we looked at. However, the amount of time and onboarding we need to do is also far greater than we realized/were told when we originally bought the product. They told us we should hire onboarding support, but at the end, after we had already reached our budget maximum for this, so it's been slower than we had hoped.

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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.

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Postgresql is the best tool out there for relational data so I have to give it a high rating when it comes to analytics, data availability and consistency, so on and so forth. SQL is also a relatively consistent language so when it comes to building new tables and loading data in from the OLTP database, there are enough tools where we can perform ETL on a scalable basis.

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Because I think it could be easier. We have different standards today since we’re used to interacting with consumer apps like Starbucks, where all you do is scan your card. Then, when you use Sales Cloud, there are still a lot of manual inputs. So my mission with AI is really about figuring out how to make that easier.

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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.

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PostgreSQL's availability is top notch. Apart from connection time-out for an idle user, the database is super reliable.

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Salesforce is always available securely from any internet-capable device anywhere in the world, UNLESS you choose to set security measures so that ONLY trusted IP ranges may access the system at certain times of the day. It's all about choice and flexibility with Salesforce products.

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Its does not have outages.

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The data queries are relatively quick for a small to medium sized table. With complex joins, and a wide and deep table however, the performance of the query has room for improvement.

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Salesforce performance in general is excellent. "The cloud infrastructure beneath Force.com has been fine-tuned over the past 10 years. It powers nearly 100,000+ businesses running more than 185,000 applications that 3 million users count on every day."
Points per Salesforce -
1) Multitenant kernel - With a multitenant platform, each business that uses the app doesn’t have its own copy. Instead, all businesses share a single copy and then customize it for their specific needs.
2) ISO 27001 certified security - You can’t compromise when it comes to enterprise-level security. Force.com is road-tested and trusted by nearly 100,000+ companies, including many of the world’s most security-conscious organizations, such as banks and health care providers.
3) Proven reliability - All Force.com apps run on world-class data centers with backup, failover, and disaster-recovery facilities. Force.com has had a proven 99.9 percent uptime record for years.
4) Proven, real-time scalability - Force.com is used by many of the world's largest enterprises, including Cisco, Japan Post Network, and Symantec. Applications can automatically scale from a few users to millions of page views, as needed.
5) Real-time query optimizer - You need fast access to your data. The Force.com query optimizer delivers under 300ms response time, at a massive scale.
6) Real-time transparent system status - You can always see real-time system performance, availability, and security information at trust.salesforce.com.
7) Real-time upgrades - Unlike traditional software platforms, our upgrades never break your customizations, code, or integrations. We upgrade the platform for you 3 to 4 times each year. As a result, you’re always on the latest version, with access to the latest features, performance, and security enhancements.
8) Real-time sandbox environments - With a single click, you can create copies of your applications, configuration, and data in separate environments for development, testing, and training.
9) Three global production data centers and disaster recovery - Force.com runs on three geographically dispersed, mirrored data centers with built-in replication, disaster recovery, a redundant network backbone, and no single points of failure

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

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There are several companies that you can contract for technical support, like EnterpriseDB or Percona, both first level in expertise and commitment to the software.

But we do not have contracts with them, we have done all the way from googling to forums, and never have a problem that we cannot resolve or pass around. And for dozens of projects and more than 15 years now.

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The overall support has been good. More and more features are being released quite frequently. Very small features are also making big difference in how the tool can be adapted and used better. If there is anything we need or are stuck, the support team sets up a call and helps in resolving the issue/provides workarounds.

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.

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I attended two training sessions. I would rate them a 4 as an advanced user. It was very basic – great for someone new – would give 8+ for new person.

I had 3 years of experience at the time. I skipped basic and went onto advanced and still not helpful. A lot of it was best practices that didn’t feel relevant for our business

It was good

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The online training is request based. Had there been recorded videos available online for potential users to benefit from, I could have rated it higher. The online documentation however is very helpful. The online documentation PDF is downloadable and allows users to pace their own learning. With examples and code snippets, the documentation is great starting point.

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I have gone through multiple. The content that’s delivered is quite basic – I wish they had more advanced training.

We are grandfathered into premium support plus training. We get unlimited access to instructor led and online training for free. We have taken advantage of this

very hands on and detailed training

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The online documentation of the PostgreSQL product is elaborate and takes users step by step.

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Just from an organizational standpoint - we standardized our data prior to moving to Salesforce. But we essentially standardized it wrong. That's created a big disgusting mess for us know that I'll have to deal with as the Admin. Be sure you think through use cases prior to doing something like that - seek outside opinions on how the data will work best, especially depending on what else you're going to integrate with Salesforce.

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.

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Although the competition between the different databases is increasingly aggressive in the sense that they provide many improvements, new functionalities, compatibility with complementary components or environments, in some cases it requires that it be followed within the same family of applications that performs the company that develops it and that is not all bad, but being able to adapt or configure different programs, applications or other environments developed by third parties apart is what gives PostgreSQL a certain advantage and this diversification in the components that can be joined with it, is the reason why it is a great option to choose.

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So I've evaluated, implemented Microsoft Dynamics in the past. I've used Oracle CRM solutions. I've used Daylight, which is a very niche CRM system the last couple of years. And I've evaluated a variety from Legacy Microsoft Ones to Zoho and Sugar when making implementation decisions at other companies. But usually I've gone with Salesforce. I'd say it's better than most. The only one that I generally prefer, and last time I chose an implementation from scratch, I did Microsoft Dynamics. And the reason is for small mid-size organization, Microsoft Dynamics, if you already have Microsoft Office products, it's much better integrated to all of the Excel, Word, OneNote, Outlook email than what you get from Salesforce. And so that's the only one that if someone's a Microsoft organization and small sized company, it'll save a lot of integration things, a lot of security, a lot of login and access and IT management by just sticking within the Microsoft ecosystem. But outside of that, if you don't use Microsoft or if you're a large organization or have other needs that you want, Salesforce I'd say is better than all of the other CRM offerings out there. It's the easiest to use and the most robust and the most vendors and products for the ecosystem.

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[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.

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Salesforce is the most widely used CRM system. Professionalism tends to increase when things go wrong for market leaders. Salesforce considers us as users because they own the market. Having all of our data in one place and all of our teams working within Salesforce. Anyone who uses Salesforce is impacted by it, even if they don't.

The DB is reliable, scalable, easy to use and resolves most DB needs

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It's very scalable as it has a ton of features (but you do need an admin who understands how to leverage these features). Because of the various features, we've also needed to host onboarding sessions with our users so that they can familiarize themselves with the platform, which isn't always super user-friendly or intuitive.

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

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Using Salesforce.com has made my daily routines more efficient and simplified the manual tasks I had to perform independently. I can now access data from any device, online or offline, and provide better guidance to my team about the forecasts provided by the built-in artificial intelligence (AI). A chat with a Salesforce support specialist would be great. The knowledge base has a community forum where Salesforce users can ask questions and learn more about the product.

• Easy to administer so our DevOps team has only ever used minimal time to setup, tune, and maintain.
• Easy to interface with so our Engineering team has only ever used minimal time to query or modify the database. Getting the data is straightforward, what we do with it is the bigger concern.
• It's free. You can't beat that.

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• It allows me to keep a close eye on all of my performance metrics through the Dashboard Reporting, ie what my sales pipeline looks like, how much it's changed in the last 60 days, new opportunities created in the last 7 days, # of emails sent for the week, etc. The ease of the design and output make it really easy to check my progress throughout the day to find where I have holes and am falling short on my personal and work goals. It's resulted in greater transparency with my Mgmt Team and shorter 1-on-1 mtgs with my boss as he can see exactly where I am at all times (to be fair, I'm a senior sales rep, so he pretty much lets me do my job completely unfettered), but it does prove that I am continually producing which recently resulted in a raise I didn't even ask for.
• The SF repository is so detailed that I don't have to spend tons of time finding frequently used websites attached to a client or see what all interactions with the company look like. Even though I don't use SF for my bulk emails and email sequences, SF provides me with an email to use in the bcc of these emails which links everything back to SF. I find that extremely helpful. This really impacts my efficiency and I can honestly say that once I started using all the functionality of data management, it saved me about 20% of my time/week that I could then allocate towards other revenue-generating tasks like prospecting and account management. The more time I have for those, the better. My year-over-year on accounts 1 year and older just grew by 17% this last year.

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• 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.

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