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Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server

Overview

What is Microsoft SQL Server?

Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database.

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Awards

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Pricing

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Subscription

$1,418.00

Cloud
Per License

Enterprise

$13,748.00

Cloud
Per License

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

An Introduction to Microsoft SQL Server's Statistics

YouTube

Introduction to Transact SQL (T-SQL) using Microsoft SQL Server

YouTube
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Product Details

What is Microsoft SQL Server?

Microsoft SQL Server Video

Microsoft SQL Server Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database.

Reviewers rate Implementation Rating highest, with a score of 9.

The most common users of Microsoft SQL Server are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews From Top Reviewers

(1-5 of 45)

Easy to use and set up, robust and reliable DBMS

Rating: 9 out of 10
January 20, 2020
lh
Vetted Review
Verified User
Microsoft SQL Server
5 years of experience
In our database department, we use Microsoft SQL Server for storing data, data aggregation, and manipulation. We use Reporting services tools for creating, managing and deploying reports for our clients. For creating a report definition I personally used Report Builder which makes defining data source connections, queries used to retrieve data, expressions, parameters and others extremely easy to perform. We also try to improve the performance of stored procedures, user-defined functions, and triggers by learning the execution plan in detail. One of our clients has a web app for an insurance company and they have a large amount of data stored in the Microsoft SQL Server database. Our goal is to improve performance from queries that are used in that web app, so we try controlling execution plans with hints or adding indexes. In cases when we meet a new client who already has some database storage then we use replication technology for copying and distributing data and objects from one database to another. Besides that, we also help our clients to build parameterized queries in order to defend from SQL injection which is one of the most common web hacking techniques.
  • It offers a lot of functionalities, such as Reporting Services, Integration Services, Job Scheduler, Resource Manager, Query Analyzer and Profiler, etc.
  • You can connect it to Active Directory if you so desire.
Cons
  • The price of the enterprise version could be a little lower and also licensing should be more understandable.
  • There can be problems when connecting with software that is not owned by Microsoft.
When a client is working in a .NET environment and he is developing a web application then it is advisable to use Microsoft SQL Server as a storage solution. Also when some company wants to store a large amount of data then Microsoft SQL Server is an extremely good solution because it is a very stable and maintainable database option. But in cases when someone wants to make a small website or application that stores a small amount of data then it is probably better to store it in some open-source database which is also free to use. When some company relies a lot on analytics then SQL Server is the first-class solution. A scenario where it would be less appropriate is when some startup doesn't have much money for starting and at the start they don't need some very professional RDBMS, then they could use something like MySQL.

Easy to implement this complete set of tools

Rating: 9 out of 10
September 10, 2019
Vetted Review
Verified User
Microsoft SQL Server
15 years of experience
It is used as a data warehousing and business intelligence platform across the whole organization.
  • Troubleshooting is easy because of several forums available on the internet. We can Google error messages and find solutions easily.
  • It has a complete set of tools for data warehousing and business intelligence, so integration and automation are easy.
  • Easy access to training and skilled workforce availability.
Cons
  • There are some in-memory tools in the market that I have used to replace analysis services. Those in-memory tools have reduced the aggregation time to a few minutes as compared to a couple of hours on analysis services.
  • Mobile apps for SSMS and SQL agent would be a good addition to the toolbelt.
  • A built-in SQL source code control tool that can be used to track code changes and schema changes from SSMS would be very useful. It should easily show who made the changes, what changes were made and when, and provide an option to roll back to any of the previous versions if needed.
SQL Server is easy to implement and has all the components for data management and business intelligence. It needs some performance improvement and built-in SQL source code change tracking.

SQL Server to the rescue

Rating: 7 out of 10
April 22, 2016
AE
Vetted Review
Verified User
Microsoft SQL Server
4 years of experience
Our company uses Microsoft SQL Server for much of our database storage needs. In the energy section, we use SQL Server to store sample data, generate reports and spreadsheets, as well as internal reporting and data manipulation.
  • SQL Server is a whole package that usually connects well with other Microsoft products.
  • SQL Server has a large community of users for tips and advice on SQL programming.
  • SQL Server works fairly seamlessly with Power BI, Power Query.
Cons
  • One glaring example is importing spreadsheets through SSIS, SQL Server only seems to sample the first few rows and generates errors if larger text cells are further down the rows.
  • SQL Server tends to be a bit more touchy with database object names than MySQL.
  • The good - SQL Server has a lot of ways to get at the data, the bad - finding particular settings is often buried in dialogs.
Microsoft SQL Server is great for interaction with other Microsoft products, it tends to be the elephant in the room, you can't miss it. MySQL can be a much more compact installation and requires fewer licensing issues to deploy a solution. Setting up a quick database and querying the data with Power BI is becoming much simpler as these products mature. As long as you already have SQL Server installed somewhere, that is. Importing data into SQL Server from Excel is pretty straight forward and it automatically sets up fields fairly well.

Happy SQL Server user since version 1.11 on OS/2 1.21

Rating: 10 out of 10
February 27, 2016
Vetted Review
Verified User
Microsoft SQL Server
25 years of experience
SQL Server is being used across the entire organization in my previous company, along with Oracle. It's being used for our POS system, our website, and dozens of internal applications. It's very easy to install and configure so we can rapidly deploy it for new applications. It can also be considerably cheaper than Oracle.
  • It's very easy to automate the install so we have a website set up where an application team can go and within a few mouse clicks, they've requested a new VM with SQL Server installed on it. The VM itself can take a day or two to deployment because it's not fully automated yet, but SQL Server is automatically installed within an hour or two.
  • All the different wizards within SQL Server Management Studio make it relatively easy for non DBAs to perform many tasks, thus making self-service possible in many instances.
  • The Always On Availability Group feature makes both High Availability and Disaster Recovery much easier to plan and implement, especially with SQL Server 2014's multiple secondaries.
  • The Database Tuning Advisor can also help relative novices tune their queries for better performance, though it can still recommend way too many indexes be created.
Cons
  • SQL Server needs something to compare/compete with Oracle's RAC. When is that coming, Microsoft?
  • I don't care for the evolution of its pricing model. SQL Server used to be a no-brainer when compared to other products on price but that's not the case anymore.
I wouldn't move to SQL Server just because management or reviewers said to. I would go with the expertise you have in house. If you have a bunch of Oracle experts and no SQL Server experts, I'd go with Oracle. However, if you've got even one SQL Server expert, you should know that one SQL Server expert can probably handle a lot more SQL Servers than a single Oracle expert can.

SQL Server Just Works

Rating: 10 out of 10
January 06, 2016
GF
Vetted Review
Verified User
Microsoft SQL Server
22 years of experience
SQL Server is our relational and structured storage tool of choice. We use it to manage multiple resources within the organization from sales data to telemetry data on the software that we create to reporting and managing data for multiple departments. We also develop software in support of SQL Server that helps manage, maintain, develop and deploy SQL Server. SQL Server is a fundamental part of our business.
  • SQL Server is first a relational management engine. It stores and manages relational data extremely well.
  • SQL Server is highly scalable. With correctly designed databases and well-tuned queries, we're able to store and retrieve data at almost any scale.
  • SQL Server is highly ubiquitous. Almost every development tool and language can be used to build software with it. Almost any reporting tool can be used to retrieve information from it.
Cons
  • Deployments of changes to existing databases can be challenging. Better support within the tool for language constructs in assistance of deployments would be helpful.
  • Development processes such as using source control to build your databases is not a native part of the tool set.
  • Query tuning is difficult for those who don't have specialized knowledge.
It's all about relational storage. There it shines and will do exactly what you need. For non-relational storage you may be better off with another tool such as DocumentDB. The ability to set up hybrid environments within SQL Server using local machines, virtual machines on services such as Azure or Amazon Web Services, and platform as a service offerings such as Azure SQL Database or Azure SQL Data Warehouse, all of which are the same SQL Server engine, makes for a very complete experience.
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