What is Your Favorite Database?
I have been hearing so many different answers to questions of favorite database. I would like to know what is favorite database of SQLAuthority.com readers. I encourage all of you to participate in this poll. It is very quick poll and takes a second.
A gift of the USB drive will be provided to user who will also add comment discussing this subject matter. I encourage to send emails to your friends to participate in the poll. I am hopping this poll becomes landmark poll for people who are finding answers to favorite database.
The above poll is now closed and we can clearly see that SQL Server is the clear winner of this poll. I was personally very happy to see SQL Server leading this poll as that has been my primary focus all these years.
You can also see that I do consultancy in SQL Server and here are the links for the same.
Comprehensive Database Performance Health Check
SQL Server Performance Tuning Practical Workshop
Let me know what if you need any help with SQL Server and I will be happy to provide you the same. Leave your comments.
Reference: Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)
44 Comments. Leave new
Well, I look at it like this… a 2-pronged approach:
1. RDBMS functionality (does it do what I need it to do?)
2. Flexibility (do I like using this ? )
Even though I have used Oracle since Oracle 5.2 (sheesh.. I’m only 37 yrs old) in my school days, I’ve enjoyed the building blocks approach to new Oracle versions, however….
SQL Server gets my vote now for the sole reason that I can accomplish more (flexibiilty) and pure rapid speed of that flexibility is much greater than anything Oracle has produced in its lifetime.
Oracle may be more configurable and thus tiny changes in the O/S or RDBMS can accomplish more that what I would have to change in SQL Server to get to , but the ease and power of SQL Server is just …. better.
Hi Pinal,
Always enjoy reading your blog. But I’d like to challenge the validity of this poll. Given that yours is a SQL Server centric blog and assuming that most of readers work with SQL Server, I feel that the results will be skewed. Running such a poll on a MySQL or Oracle blog will give significantly different results.
BTW: I voted for SQL Server
I do freelance website programming in Asp.net so SQL Server is a natural choice for me.
I also find the tools for SQL server management to be much easier to use than those for the other databases I have tried. Being a VB.NET programmer I want to be able to deal with my databases using a GUI and only dip into SQL when it is absolutely necessary.
My vote, SQL Server. SQL Server is the only enterprise database product that doesnt require a DBA!
Where I’m working now we have 2 Oracle DBA’s running a smaller database than our SQL Server which is maintained by our developers.
SQL Server is the best by far. Some may complain that it costs money, but with SQL Express (as a server option) and SQL Compact (as an embedded option) being available for FREE there’s really no excuse not to use it.
Also, I’m not interested in winning the USB drive; I just wanted to add a little discussion to this poll.
I find the use of MySQL for small applications sufficient.
SQL server is a great choice for medium to large applications and would be my first choice.
Oracle is busy dying out and maintanace is not as simple as SQL Server.
I voted SQL Server because I have in mind that most customers don’t want the Database ONLY anymore. They mostly want analysis services and reporting services too!
Sure, you can connect to other Databases with SSAS and even SSRS directly or with SSIS, but we favor the “whole solution” from Microsoft because of some pitfalls you have with “alien” data sources. :-)
It’s a pity IBM DB2 is not included. Its free version is many times faster and has much more features than MySQL, and also comes with less strings attached.
Still voting for SQL server since this is my primary DB, though (and it also has the most usable tools with nicest GUI).
I like reading your blog,m but I think that such a poll on a SQL Server centric will be a bit biased in the results.
It’s like asking what is your favorite programming language on a Java related blog or which car brand do you prefer on a blog that talks about Audi cars :)
the MS SQL Server family has been the toolset I have preferred to use since the introduction of MS SQL SQL Server 2000. While many malign enterprise manager and management studio those toolsets have made it easy to administer db servers of all scales and opens it up to developers and non developers alike. These tools allow you to manipulate the db, diagnose performance bottlenecks with ease. The other offerings out there have faciltiies for htis but they are neither simple or nor integrated cleanly in their application.
If I were building a new applicaiton today I would be hard pressed to not consider MS SQL as the db of choice.
Am I the only one that wants to make a joke about Master or AdventureWorks being my favorite database? No wait – TempDB is by far my favorite database!
I think the question should have been “What is your favorite rdbms?” or “What is your favorite database server”.
But while we’re asking – what’s your favorite schema? Mines sys for sure! ;)
Pinal it is totally not WORTH of your time to answer some of the question.
Btw, SQL Server rocks and it is way better than any other Database available in market.
I’m not sure thats a fair question to ask. There are TONS of databases out there both free and commerical. The real question is always whats you’re favorite database for X.
For a ‘Enterprise’ DB, I like Sql server. It has a low barrier to entry, good tools, reasonable price point etc etc. I like PL/SQL as a stored proc language better than t-sql, but I find the learning curve for new developers to be higher on Oracle.
MySQL’s licensing terms, specifically the GPL’ed ADO.Net provider, personally make it a ‘meh’ option in the open source / free category. If I had to pick an enterprise database for linux shops I’d go with Postgres or Firebird first. MySQL’s ability to have differing disk formats is a really great feature. However the disk formats that it ships with are in my book un-compelling. Postgres and Firebird both have much better concurrency models. They both have much better procedural languages. They dont ‘blackmail’ me into buying support by GPLing a component that every other vendor on the planet licenses under the LGPL and then offering a binary-only support contract.
One database I find myself using a lot is SQLite. It’s a very very simple database. It’s serverless, locking is coordinated through the database file. The resource requirements are low enough for use in embeded systems. The great part about it is the zero-config aspect of it All you need to do is link in the library and point it at the db file. This is great for stuff you’d never think of using a database for otherwise. If I’m writing an application that needs data files, I can make them a database. I can use it as a light-weight db for unit testing. For webapps that expect an unzip and go deployment it’s a wonderful option. I can have a real db that simply lives on a file in the app.
I think Microsoft Access is the best database evah! It lets management types do an initial design, get in way over their head, and then pay me to redo it in SQL Server.
definitely SQL Server. I don’t have any terribly wonderful reasons except that it’s easy to use and manage. That and the tools available for SQL Server crush the tools available for any other database server I’ve worked with. I love my IDE, and SQL Management Studio is the shit.
SQL Server had my vote. But I must agree that this is a predetermined winner. Something like a self fulfilling prophecy. At least when posted on a page committed to MS SQL Server driven by a MCP ;)
At least interesting htat for now there are 22% not voting for SQL Server.
Greetings,
Sascha
This is actually a difficult question for me to answer. In many ways, I LOVE the SQL in MS SQL Server better. Allowing conditional execution to inline styles (IF / CASE), table variables, etc.
However, that said, the MySQL admins tend to be MUCH easier to work with. I use Navicat to access MySQL and it makes things sooo easy to work with MySQL databases. On the other hand, I use SQL Server Management Studio which makes my head hurt :)
So, all to say, I prefer SQL Server DB and MySQL admin clients.
BEST RDBMS in Market :
SQL Server
Few reasons:
1. Costs Less.
2. Extra Security.
3. Extra features
4. Comes with many free tools.
5. Have capabilities to handle VLDB (UPSS – 18 TB, Myspace uses SQL Server)
6. Comparatively easy to handle/Interfaces.
List goes on and on….
More Important… I am getting monthly pay cheques because I am SQL Server DBA. :)
In my work experience, I have worked in both SQL Server and Oracle. I have good experience in query tuning in both of them, probably more in SQL Server than in Oracle. However, two things I can clearly infer from my experience.
1. SQL Server is eazy to use, program and understand. Its more user/programmer friendly than Oracle.
2. Oracle on any day performs better than SQL Server in terms of volume of data it can store and fetching data and performance. Oracle beats SQL Server in terms of how much data it can cater.
So Oracle is the way to go to for corporates whose data will be ever increasing. SQL Server is something programmers can use to learn querying and query tuning.
I think Sql Server is the best among all of that , actually in this fast generation we need to learn fastly and know what exactly going , so that , microsoft did this in very efficient way.