REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) vs. Microsoft SQL Server

REDCap surveys are very suitable for clinical trials and public health surveys. It's less appropriate for market researches .

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

• Customization. I can use HTML to change format but there are also a ton of built in functionality for branching logic, matrix configuration, slider scales, etc.
• Security. HIPPA compliance is extremely important for medical research and REDCap ensures our data is safe.
• Variety of use. Being able to send both surveys and create forms for internal use makes the use cases numerous.

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

• I don't really see many issues with REDCap.

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 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

It is very interesting to me especially that it meets all my needs. The libraries makes the job even much easier, since you can just make a few adjustments to the appropriate template chosen

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

They respond almost immediately to queries

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

very hands on and detailed training

Incentivized

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

SurveyMonkey and Google Forms have similar features for surveys but they lack the form options and user interface. They are also not HIPPA compliant so we are not able to collect any identifying information which is usually an issue in research when we are tracking participants. Many institutional review boards won't even approve a study without a HIPPA compliant data collection service.

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

• REDCap allowed us to house all patient information in one single portal which helped us eliminate the need for paper copies. We moved our whole filing system to an electronic version when we became "live" on REDCap. It is also very convenient and accessible to have all of this data in one location.
• A very positive impact is the ability for multiple users to see the same health and wellness information for each specific patient. Instead of constantly having to go back and forth via email, phone, etc. to ask about the patient; we could simply look up their information in REDCap and find all of the answers. It made our business much more efficient and made the patients feel as though we did our research prior to meeting with them.

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