I just received following “NOT FOR SALE” subscription of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN. As a MVP, MCT I already have free subscription to MSDN and TechNet. I plan to give away this free subscription to someone who is need of the same or can use it the best.
You can win the subscription. I will pick the winner of the subscription on 25th of the July. Which means you have 10 days to take part. I will decide the winner with the help of fellow MVPs and subject matter experts.
You need to answer one simple question: Why SQL Server is better than any other RDBMS applications?
Leave your answer as a comment to this thread, or post it on your blog with links to this blog post. To avoid spams and bad entries, I will moderate all the comments. If you have left comment and it is not visible send me the same comment in email pinal “at” sqlauthority.com . All the entries should be there before 25th July. I will announce winner before 1st of August.
Update: Due to overwhelming response of the contest, the evaluation of the winner is still going on. I will announce very soon who won the subscription.
Reference : Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)
154 Comments. Leave new
@Pinal.
Visual Studio has been mis-spelled in title.
Additional Information:
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Just adding some additional information about this post.
I just found out that this subscription is worth : $11,899 (USD)
Link : https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/pricing/
All the Best Guys.
~ Peace.
There are several reasons why SQL Server is better than any other RDBMS.
User-friendly: anyone can start with SQL Server Management Studio
Cost: It’s affordable compared to other similar systems
Cloud: You’ve got almost all the features in the cloud as on premise.
BI: Business Intelligence is included in the package!
You can easily connect to SQL Server, either with SSMS, Excel, Access, .NET, PHP or what ever’s your favourite application/programming language
SQL Server is better because it is a great environment for all types of DB professionals: DBA, BI and DB Developers.
Simply because it provides much better value. It is the most comprehensive while still being easy to use.
SQL is more user friendly like Nokia. :)
SQL Server is better than any other RDBMS because-
1.It is easy to Install
2.It is easy to operate
3.It is easy to maintain
4.But cost effective.
SQL Server has got SQL Server Management Objects(SMO) for programmatic management of SQL Server. SMO can be used for creating a client similar to SSMS. Moreover SMO can also be used for running SSIS packages using .NET. This makes SQL Server better than any other RDBMS.
The best “feature” of SQL Server is the broad and active community – one can always ask a question on a forum and get an excellent professional answer within minutes. Application-wise I cannot really express my opinion, because I am not an expert in any other RDBMS system, and the only perks and shortcomings I know are the ones of SQL Server, so I do not have a solid ground for a compare. However, I am confident that the support and the professionalism of the community bring great value to the product.
For me the reasons it is the best RDMS software is as follows
1. Its easy to install
2. The areas of the software are clearly marked i.e.
BI / Notification services / etc
3. Intergration of CLR functions
4. Use of SQL Features inside Visual Studio i.e SMO and managed classes
5. The community of users is polite / welcoming and vast in knowledge for all vertical markets.
Because it has User-Defined Table Types and Table-Valued Parameters.
SQL Server is better than other RDBMS applications because..
Its accessible – even non-technical people can get a database up and running in short order.
Built in business intelligence – SSAS, SSIS and SSRS all available within the BIDS framework.
Cost – The sheer number of features available either free or on a standard license is extremely high
But mostly, I think SQL Server is better than other RDBMS applications I’ve used because of the community – the experts are approachable, humble and always seem willing to continue to learn new things.
SQL Server RDBMS is better than other RDBMS in the sense that it offers a full range of products from being a Relational Database Systems to providing an end to end data warehosuing Life Cycle.
It provides tools and applications to perform ETL operations and carry through the Datawarehousing process to provide end user reporting and predictive analysis features using Data Mining.
As a an RDBMS which is easy to install and administer, the product has expanded its footprint into the areas of Self Service BI and Cloud Computing.
I learned RDBMS on SQL Server 2000 back in 2002; picked up a book and read it until the pages came out. It was an easy-to-use, developer-friendly relational database, which tied nicely to classic ASP. I wrote tons of stored procedures from the start, and avoided using ad hoc queries — and never had any security issues.
For a university’s online directory that needed quick response and tons of features, I wrote the entire search engine in a SQL Server stored procedure, with additional user-defined functions. At the time, the school’s data was in flat files stored on OpenVMS. I used a nightly DTS to pull the data and ran cleanup procedures to store it on SQL Server. All of this with great ease. And lets not forget: There’s not an equivalent of DTS/SSIS on Oracle. Going back to SQL Server 2000, this has been a powerful feature of the database, making developers’ lives easier.
For the same directory project, I needed to provide users with the option to leave multiple fields blank and allow searches on any combination of values they provided. The handy “coalesce” function made this a snap. I posted to SQL Server forums and got great help on how to accomplish this. The final SELECT statement looks beastly, but it’s quick and efficient. This was long before Oracle supported the “coalesce” function.
Also, I constantly used the IF EXISTS (SELECT *…) in my stored procedures and user-defined functions. Believe it or not, Oracle still doesn’t have a direct equivalent of this easy feature. If you wanted to insert a row but wanted to check that it didn’t already exist, you’d simply do an IF EXISTS. Easy and intuitive. This is much harder in Oracle.
In addition, the ease of using stored procedures with web apps makes SQL Server a web developer’s best friend. It took us over 2 weeks to get Oracle working with ASP.NET; SQL Server worked with it like a breeze. And the syntax was easy too. If you’ve connected Oracle stored procedures to ASP.NET apps, it’s not a trivial task. We had to install a 200Mb data provider to talk to Oracle. Not my idea of easy.
Moreover, SQL Server installs and runs smoothly with the Visual Studio development suite. SQL Server comes with the Management Studio tool built-in; you often buy extra utilities to get the same functionality out of other RDBMS.
With Oracle, you have to set up TNS files and ensure they have the correct settings on development and production. With SQL Server, you don’t have to worry about any of this.
Reporting tools? Built into SQL Server. As far back as 2002, you could purchase an inexpensive ($5, if I remember correctly) add-on from Microsoft to enable reporting capabilities. Today, the SSRS tool is robust, easy to use, and also developer-friendly. For years I was trying to convince my boss to go with SSRS; she finally went to a conference and saw how powerful it was and she was sold. Instead of a third-party tool that kept crashing daily, the university went with a product that users, admins, and developers love.
The single feature I prefer are the deployment options. I worked on software installations, and SQL Server is about the only RDBMS that you can deploy in a setup with your own software: You can easily connect to an existing instance, or you can install an existing instance.
You can do that all in your Setup software. I also tried to do the same thing for Oracle, but that’s just impossible – even finding out which Client version is installed on a computer is an impossible task. For Oracle you cannot really automate the installation of your software, so you need to send an engineer to the customer site to install and configure everything.
The one competitor that allows deployment is MySQL, but SQL Server has much better upgrading paths.
So, my criterium is integration with software sold by VARs, and then SQL Server is the clear winner.
I love it because it is extremely easy to use, very easy to install. I love the fact that you can use the GUI to generate the T-SQL scripts behind each command.
I love the Business Intelligence built in.
I love the fact that it’s scalable and I even love the fact that there’s a whole Developer edition that you can use freely to test out what you will need in your environment.
I love the fact that it is fully integrated into Virtual Studio, and, as a programmer, it makes things so much easier!
All in all an awesome product.
SQL Server has the best tools and the most accessible, active, and knowledgeable community of any RDBMS.
Simply because it is from Microsoft :)
Other reasons could be the as a .NET Developers , this is already bundled with Visual Studio ( SQL Express Edition )
which makes the whole process easier
I don’t do much with any SQL, but when I do I very much like SQL Server’s low maintenance; you don’t need someone babysitting the server(s) 24×7.
SQL server has one of the best price points. Plus you get SSIS and SSRS built in!
SQL Server is better than other RDBMSs because:
– #sqlhelp: thousands of community members race to help others when they need an answer or tutorial. Just amazing.
– @: Thousands of community members on Twitter and other social networks, ready to provide technical, moral, humourous, and profesisonal help when needed.
– #sqlSaturdayXX: Free, open to anyone training at the professional level. Again, amazing.
– #sqlPASS: a great professional organization, free to join, for professional development and community building. International organization with local chapters.
– Many installation license options. Embedded, Express, Enterprise. Some of them free. A price point for all businesses, not just giant corporations with unlimited tech budgets
– Azure: In the cloud…
– Broad support in third party tools. Much better support than other RDBMs.