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A good tool for data exploration.
November 07, 2019

A good tool for data exploration.

Duncan Hernandez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server is the base of all of our in-house servers. We use it to access all of our internal and external data that comes from Verint and other places. It solves our need to store the data that we have in one location and to create a data warehouse on top of it.
  • The workbench is very good. I like that you can explore multiple databases in one query window.
  • Exploring data is very manageable compared to other SQL querying tools.
  • Simple language to learn and very easy to transition from other SQL learned in other environments.
  • IntelliSense slows down query writing. It sometimes freezes the query window.
  • The data that you can copy-paste from the results is limited and I'd like to be able to copy-paste whatever I want.
  • It isn't case sensitive, which isn't a problem until you get to reporting.
  • It is slow to update. I'd like to see updates that are more in line with current trends in the industry.
  • Getting Microsoft means getting the whole package with SSIS and SSRS, which are built-in reporting and ETL tools.
  • Relatively inexpensive compared to other servers.
Amazon Redshift is a cloud-based data warehouse. It does what it says it will do, but my experience is that for a cloud data warehouse, it is a little slow and I'd hope for performance to be insanely fast. Plus, it is also very costly. Same performance for much less cost in Microsoft, which is why we have everything in-house.
This is an area for improvement. Getting support from Microsoft feels too generic and I would like to see it be a little more specific to what we are trying to do. However, there is so much online about Microsoft that we don't really use the support all that much. We normally can figure out our own issues.

Do you think Microsoft SQL Server delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Microsoft SQL Server's feature set?

Yes

Did Microsoft SQL Server live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Microsoft SQL Server go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Microsoft SQL Server again?

Yes

For data exploration, it is very good. Being able to explore data across different databases and servers without switching windows is very convenient and saves a good amount of time.
Query errors are hard to dissect. I'd love for more details to be included or if the server was smarter in diagnosing errors at more precise locations in the query.